{"id":63252,"date":"2010-06-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-international-engineering-program-director-retires-leaves-legacy-at-global-corporations-engineering-schools\/"},"modified":"2010-06-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T00:00:00","slug":"uri-international-engineering-program-director-retires-leaves-legacy-at-global-corporations-engineering-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/06\/uri-international-engineering-program-director-retires-leaves-legacy-at-global-corporations-engineering-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 International Engineering Program director retires, leaves legacy at global corporations, engineering schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 18, 2010 — When John Grandin retired this month as executive director of the International Engineering Program at the 溏心vlog免费B站, he left behind a model that universities throughout the country are following and a long list of students and global corporations that are benefitting from his efforts.<\/p>\n


\n\tGrandin, a professor of German, and former 溏心vlog免费B站 Engineering Dean Hermann Viets conceived of the idea of \u201cinternationalizing\u201d engineering education by encouraging engineering students to study a foreign language \u2013 initially German, but later French, Spanish and Chinese \u2013 and participate in an internship and study abroad. They believed that engineers with multicultural skills would be better prepared to enter the global workforce.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThere were some real doubters in the language and engineering programs when we proposed the idea,\u201d Grandin said. \u201cThe language program has a firm tradition in the humanities and some colleagues feared an association with anything as pragmatic as engineering, whereas the engineers tended to think that any additional coursework should be strictly in technology. But we knew it would be beneficial to both.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tTheir timing couldn\u2019t have been better. Soon after they launched the program in 1987, the Berlin Wall came down and, coupled with a technology revolution, global opportunities skyrocketed. And the doubters soon became converts.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cPeople saw that good things were happening with the program,\u201d said Grandin. \u201cWe were attracting better and more motivated engineering students, and enrollment in language classes increased significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tOne of the challenges resulting from the increasing popularity of the program was finding enough internship opportunities abroad. So Grandin found himself spending more and more of his time making contacts with large German companies like Siemens, BMW, Volkswagen, ZF and others. As the program expanded to include other languages, he expanded these efforts to companies in other countries.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhen other universities began to follow suit and establish similar international engineering programs, Grandin launched an annual colloquium that now attracts about 165 engineering and language faculty, as well as representatives from the public sector and global companies to learn about the best practices in the field.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThat colloquium really put us on the map as the leader in the globalization of engineering education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\n\tOne of Grandin\u2019s proudest moments as the program\u2019s director was his establishment of the first dual degree master\u2019s program in engineering, in which students studying engineering and German earn master\u2019s degrees from 溏心vlog免费B站 and the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany after spending time studying and conducting research at both institutions.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s quite significant for students to have qualifications from both North America and Europe,\u201d Grandin explained. \u201cDegree recognition from two continents is a great entr\u00e9e to the global workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tIn celebration of Grandin\u2019s retirement, the International Engineering Program hosted its first alumni reunion on U.S. soil on June 5 and more than 250 people honored him at a dinner at the Dunes Club in Narragansett.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cTo prepare generations of workers with a global mindset for the international work place the way that John has is an incredible accomplishment, and he did it in Rhode Island, a place many Americans have trouble placing on a map,\u201d said Marshall Vale, director of software engineering at iRobot, who graduated from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 1995. \u201cJohn\u2019s vision and hard work have made the IEP the crown jewel of 溏心vlog免费B站.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI have heard from several recruiters and employers about how my resume stands out because of my participation in the IEP,\u201d said Philip DaSilva, who graduated last month with degrees in mechanical engineering and German. \u201cThe reputation of the program and the people who have come out of the program are amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tDuring the event, the German government awarded Grandin the Federal Cross of Merit, the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. \u2028It was presented by German Consul General Friedrich L\u00f6hr.<\/p>\n


\n \tAs part of the retirement celebration, a fundraising campaign was launched to establish an endowment with the aim of making the program financially independent of the ups and downs of the Rhode Island economy. The campaign has already raised more than $350,000 from alumni and corporate partners.<\/p>\n


\n\tIn retirement, Grandin hopes to serve as a consultant to other universities in need of guidance for their international engineering programs, provide assistance to the 溏心vlog免费B站 program as needed, and write a book about higher education. But mostly he looks forward to spending time at his family cottage in Maine.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI love to swing a hammer,\u201d he said, \u201cso I look forward to spending plenty of time doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tGrandin is confident he has left the 溏心vlog免费B站 program in good hands with its new director, Sigrid Berka, who he said is \u201cdynamic and energetic, with good instincts to take the program forward.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt has been so rewarding to see our students come back many years after graduation and have them feel a strong affinity for our program and say that it has impacted their lives and opened up career opportunities,\u201d he said. \u201cI wish them all a career as exciting as mine has been.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above:

\nJohn Grandin displays a quilt of the International Engineering Program house that he received during his retirement celebration. . 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Communications & Marketing photo by Joe Giblin.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 18, 2010 — When John Grandin retired this month as executive director of the International Engineering Program at the 溏心vlog免费B站, he left behind a model that universities throughout the country are following and a long list of students and global corporations that are benefitting from his efforts. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}