from the UW news bureau Starting 15 years ago with a program involving the University of Braunschweig, in what was then known as West Germany, UW's Engineering Student Exchange Program has ex panded steadily. Today, 50 to 60 UW engineering students are studying abroad at any given time while undergraduate engineering students from overseas - some 60 to 70 - are on the UW campus. The first faculty to develop a student exchange program was arts, as German language students went abroad to study at the University of Mannheim, 21 years ago. Today, more engineering students are involved in exchange programs than students of all the other faculties combined. The founder of the engineering program was Dr. Jerzy Pindera, now a professor emeritus in the department of civil engineering. A Polish academic before coming to UW, Pindera is a firm believer in the concept. He had close connections with Braunschweig and launched the exchange in 1980. Current program director is Dr. Herb Ratz, retired electrical and computer engineering professor. He was involved in studies in Sweden as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He believes strongly in the concept and his interest has increased in response to the global scale of technology growth since the Second World War. UW's exchange agreements now involve 24 other universities in 13 countries, including five each in France and Germany. The other countries involved are Australia, Denmark, England, Japan, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, South Korea, Switzerland and Ukraine. The latest addition is Singapore. In most exchanges, UW engineering exchange students are there primarily for the academic programs; in others, such as one with Tottori University in Japan (which has had an agreement since 1988) exchange students combine academic studies with work-term experience in Japanese industry, similar to their co-op experience in Canada. It's felt that engineering expertise is no longer confined by national boundaries. Ideas, intellectual property, designs and processes, as well as the capital for their implementation, move easily all over the map. The trade in natural resources and heavy manufactured goods has given way to engineered works, engineering services, and high-value artifacts with great technical content. "These days, world trade is the name of the game," Ratz said. "The engineering graduate with experience in, and knowledge of, other cultures, languages and ways of doing things, will be at a definite advantage in the global trading economy." Employers of UW engineering graduates sometimes specifically look for these kinds of skills when they consider hiring graduates, he said. Many UW students who have participated in exchanges say they're aware of this. John Knegt went to the University of Tottori in Japan for the 1992-93 year in part because he perceives Japan as a "leading economic power in the world" and wanted to ex perience the educational and industrial systems there. Similarly impressed was Cindy Warwick, who spent her work term with a civil engineering firm involved in flood forecasting with Japan's river systems. Anita Netherton, who spent the 1989-90 year at Braunschweig, found work on her own since there is no co-op system, while the university experience were challenging because all the lectures and exams were in German. Robert Wall spent the 1993-94 year at the University of Leeds, where he found there was more emphasis on problem solving and less on mathematics than at UW. Bruce James and Alan Dunlop opted for the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, where a co-op system is in effect. They experienced "some gaps," academically, which they had to fill in on their own, but returned home with, among other accomplishments, an understanding of the political problems of Northern Ireland. Many students found one of the main differences was that overseas universities often place more weight on "self- teaching." Others say it's a more-focused approach, as con trasted with the North America where students "learn a little bit about many things." Rob Bauer, now a master's student at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace, was at a research institute sponsored by a Korean steel company at Pohang, also the site of the company-sponsored Pohang University of Science and Technology. It was almost like being a graduate student, doing work in robotics at a theoretical level, he said. Kei Fukuyama, a Japanese student who spent the first year of his master's program at UW as an exchange student, is back in a PhD program. Japanese students who come to Wa terloo often end up in international divisions within large Japanese companies when they return home. he said. Their experience at UW helps prepare them for such postings. Dr. Keith Hipel of the systems design engineering department says the key advantage of exchange programs is providing students with an opportunity to experience, first hand, a different culture. "Japan is an ideal place for our students to experience this," he said. "Japan is a country in which the industrial leaders are almost invariably drawn from the ranks of the engineering profession, whereas in Canada top management is much more apt to come from accountancy, law, or marketing." Hipel said spending time overseas has a noticeable effect on students who "get their eyes opened, and we notice the change when they return." He says four former UW exchange students liked working there so much they moved to Japan after graduation and are now successfully pursuing careers there. According to Ratz, the success of the exchange program depends on such things as an on-going interest on the part of at least one faculty member from each of the two exchang ing institutions, who must be willing to work together to iron out myriad details. Hipel sees the exchange program as a natural development from research exchanges between faculty members and notes that the Tottori University agreement grew, initially, out of research cooperation between himself and a counterpart in Japan that started 20 years ago. "Undergraduate exchange programs are one way of enhancing the education of future engineers in a significant way," Ratz said. "While the academic-technology portion of any exchange program is extremely important, the cultural experience gained by the students appears to be of equal or even greater importance. We've drawn that conclusion from the things our students tell us on their return."