Evaluating the Impact of Training on Increasing Cross Culture Competency

In our global world, engineering students have a greater need to develop cultural competency. As new engineers enter the workforce, they will be exposed to global projects through industry and possibly through outreach for which they will need to be competent culturally. Programs that expose students to different cultures are available to some during college, such as study abroad programs or Engineers Without Borders (EWB). But whether these experiences increase one’s cultural competency is still not clear. One study, using a cross-culturally valid assessment, showed no evidence that students who traveled on EWB projects saw an increase in their cultural competency after traveling and working briefly in a foreign land. I wanted to explore whether training students in cultural differences would in fact improve their competencies. In this paper, I evaluated the effectiveness of cultural training on intercultural competency by using the Intercultural Develop Inventory (IDI) survey, which is a cross-culturally valid assessment tool, to measure student’s cultural competency pre and post classroom training. The training was part of a Global Project Management course in which the habits and cultural differences of several national cultures were analyzed and discussed in addition to the project management curriculum. The students that were surveyed were graduate level in the Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department. Over the course of 7 semesters, 131 students were evaluated. The students completed the cultural competency survey during the first week of class and then again at the end of the term. The results, however, showed no significant change in the average cultural competency for this group of students. Possible reasons for these results are discussed in the paper.