Partnering with Universities Abroad

Abstract

While the original IEP limited the student time abroad to a six-month professional internship, IEP students today spend a full year abroad, first as exchange students for one semester at a partner institution and then as professional interns for six months with partner companies. Given the number of IEP exchange partnerships with universities in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, it is perhaps surprising that university exchanges were not a part of our original plan. The addition of exchanges first came about when the wife of President Bernd Rebe of the Technische Universität Braunschweig in Germany came across an article about the IEP in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1989, and brought it to her husband’s attention. He, in turn, passed this information on to Dr. Peter Nübold, head of the Braunschweig Language Center, who contacted me and suggested that we may have some common interests. Peter Nübold had been overseeing Braunschweig language programs, and as we had begun to do at URI, had been devoted to teaching languages with different contact bases, e.g., teaching languages for engineers. He had also spent a sabbatical teaching in the U.S., felt comfortable with both cultures and was very devoted, as was I, to supporting the exchange of U.S. and German engineering students. With Peter’s encouragement, therefore, President Rebe urged Hermann Viets and me to visit Braunschweig when on our next trip to Germany, which we did in 1990.