Introducing Global Competence in Swedish Engineering Education

This innovative practice work-in-progress paper describes a recently launched university-wide initiative to strengthen global competence education at Sweden's largest technical university, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Current engineering education is expected to equip graduates with the skills needed to work effectively and ethically in environments characterized by social and cultural diversity. While this is commonly agreed on, adjusting program curricula to meet this need has proven to be a challenging task. To address this issue in a pragmatic way, KTH decided in 2016 to introduce an extra-curricular Certificate of Global Competence as a non-intrusive way of complementing existing programs. The certificate is made up of two courses and an international experience. This initiative has been designed to not only help students develop global competence but also to encourage and ensure quality in international mobility. As the certificate courses are elective for all programs at the university, students are presented with an opportunity to work closely together with people from different programs and backgrounds. This fosters cross-disciplinary understanding and encourages internationalization at home. The novelty of the certificate-nothing like it existed at any Swedish university-created uncertainty at the top management level. Even though one of the advantages of the certificate was the fact that it would strengthen the university's global competence education while leaving existing programs untouched, the validation process took more than two years. However, the final result, this bottom-up initiative, is now endorsed by top management and part of the university's internationalization endeavors. This paper presents the process of introducing the certificate as well as initial findings from the first courses. It also contains plans to extend the global competence initiative to faculty members in order to make the certificate an integral part of the university's overall internationalization agenda.