Inside Tech USA Summer Course: A Leadership Program that Offers New Qualifications for Engineers

Abstract

Over the next decade, Spain (as in most Western countries) will face an acute shortage of newly qualified engineers. In addition, the professional career of these engineers will evolve in an international and multicultural environment that requires additional skills that are not part of the traditional curricula imparted in technical education. The Comillas University of Madrid is seriously concerned about this problem and is consequentlyacting in several different ways. The most important actions are the very well-known Erasmus program and the changes needed to adapt to the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This paper is devoted to a different and very innovative one: the 'Inside Tech USA' Summer Course. 'Inside Tech USA' is the fourth edition of a theory-based and practical summer course taking place in July in Boston and Washington D.C. The course is organized by the Spanish Comillas University's School of Engineering (ICAI) in conjunction with the Georgetown University (Center for Intercultural Education and Development) in the United States.