German and Engineering: An Overdue Alliance

Abstract

What do an aerospace engineer and a Kafka scholar have in common?' At the University of Rhode Island the answer is a strong interest in the German language and cultures, a belief that the American educational system must be responsive to national needs, and the confidence that tradition should not prevent distant ends of the university from collaborating in a healthy way. Though these affinities might have led only to lofty platitudes some years ago, the changing world economy and the new international competitiveness have provided the framework within which cooperation between two such educators is now not only possible but necessary. America leads the world in technological expertise, but falls short when it attempts to communicate its knowledge in the world marketplace. The time has come for the Germanist and other humanists to join forces with the technologist to provide the next generation of American professionals with all of the tools necessary for productive, fulfilling, and rewarding careers in the global workplace. The aerospace engineer mentioned above is Dr. Hermann Viets, Dean of Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, the Kafka scholar is a Professor of German and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (as well as the author of these pages). What began just a few short years ago for these two persons as casual conversation about the plight of our culturebound and monolingual society, grew into the conviction that the University of Rhode Island had both the resources and the will to create a working educational relationship between the German faculty and the College of Engineering. The German Section had a history of commitment to German for the professions, and several of the engineering faculty were deeply interested in German and Germany, some by virtue of their fluency in the language, others through their research contacts with colleagues abroad. Even though there was no historical precedent or model in other institutions, this basis of interest across the disciplines made action very possible. A joint foreign language and engineering committee was appointed to explore the feasibility of a new program combining engineering and foreign language studies. This group was asked to determine: 1) whether there is tangible evidence that it is desirable for technologists to learn a second language; 2) why engineers have typically avoided foreign language study; 3) how engineers might be encouraged to study languages; 4) whether one might be able to find support, financial and otherwise, from educational, governmental, and private sources for the creation of a program to address this issue. The following is a summary of this group's findings and an outline of the International Engineering Program which has been designed at the University of Rhode Island in response to these findings.