Improving the quality of engineering internship experiences with enduring wisdom from different cultures

Abstract

This short paper provides a brief overview of an undergraduate student project designed to identify wisdom from different cultures and historical periods that might enable engineering students to improve the quality of their internship experiences. Based on student surveys, interviews, focus sessions, and investigations to compare both modern and historical advice, team members identified useful wisdom from the past that they believe can improve student perspectives and behavior in ways that will deepen the quality of their internship experiences beyond that which modern advice is able to accomplish. This advice will be useful for independent reflection as well as for university class discussion and pre-internship orientation since it contains a range of ideas that many engineering students may not have had much exposure to.