Spring Break
URI IEP celebrates anniversary
Robert Preliasco
Issue date: 10/2/07 Section: News
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In attendance were Governor Donald Carcieri, URI President Robert L. Carothers and other URI officials, corporate and private donors, alumni, current students and visitors from foreign universities.
During the ceremony John Grandin, executive director of IEP, described the program as, "A marriage of the study of language and culture with engineering and technology."
Students in the five-year program earn a degree in an engineering discipline and a foreign language. They spend their fourth year abroad in the country they are studying and hold an engineering internship in the second semester. The program boasts members studying German, French, Spanish and Chinese.
Speaking as a former businessman, Carcieri said that he understands the importance of a graduate who can work internationally.
"Combining an engineering degree with foreign language training makes URI graduates more competitive on the global market," he said.
Carcieri added, "I know the demand around the globe that comes out of the school of engineering."
Carothers praised the quality of URI's IEP students.
"The IEP program now attracts the highest profile students at the university," he said. "This is a day of great pride for the University of Rhode Island."
Aside from celebrating the anniversary of the IEP, the ceremony was also meant to christen the new IEP house, which opened this semester next to the old one on Upper College Road.
Together the two residences are called the Heidi Kirk Duffy Center for International Engineering Education.
Duffy and her late husband Chet, a URI alumnus, have been significant donors to the university. Duffy donated her personal yacht to the university, which was sold at an auction for $400,000 to generate funds for the renovation of the new IEP residence hall - the former Chi Phi fraternity house.
Duffy was not the only donor honored at the ceremony. The Sensors and Controls Division of Texas Instruments also contributed $400,000 to the IEP, which is why the new building is called the Texas Instruments House. The company is now called Sensata Technologies, which is headed by URI graduate Thomas Wroe. Donna Kimmel, the senior vice president of Sensata, was on hand Friday on behalf of Wroe.
Also present was Lya Friedrich Pfeifer, president of the Max Kade Foundation that donated $200,000 to the IEP. The Max Kade Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by a German immigrant and dedicated to promoting German language and culture. The second floor of the Texas Instruments House is called the Max Kade German Language Learning Community, in which students studying the language live together.
In the final part of the ceremony, Vice President Mufit Bahadir, from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, signed an agreement with Carothers officially creating a dual-degree program between his school and URI. Under the agreement, URI doctoral students can choose to divide their education between URI and Bruanschweig in order to earn a degree from both institutions.
10/02/07 - The IEP program was created in 1987 by Grandin and the then-Dean of Engineering Hermann Viets.
"We knew everything was getting international and global," Grandin said. "We knew students would need to work internationally but universities weren't preparing them for that."
Grandin and Vietts began the program exclusively in German and expected to have about 15 interested students. Instead, 41 students signed up in the first year.
"We were surprised and pleased by that," Grandin said.
Today the program has 225 members. It has expanded to include the French, Spanish and Chinese languages and is partnered with 10 universities worldwide.
Grandin said that there is always room to expand the program, and he hopes to one day add a greater focus on China, as well as majors in Italian, Japanese and Arabic.
"Because of the need for engineers with international preparation, there are never enough students in the program," he said.
