Georgia Tech-Lorraine - An American Island in a French Sea (Part 3) 

by Andrew Kerr
November 2007

In this four-part series we look at Georgia Tech-Lorraine, a campus of Georgia Tech located in Metz, France.

The Global Nature of Work

Study-abroad programs have traditionally been more humanities-based ("study French literature...in France!"). But with the rise of the internet, the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, and myriad other bellwether indicators, it has become clear that an awareness of the global economy and an understanding of international cultural practices will be essential tools for more than just fans of Voltaire. By offering engineering students a chance to study in France, GT-L has begun a novel experiment.

Assistant professor Paul Voss actually did study French literature (if you want a tip, he recommends Camus's The Plague Years) before turning his focus towards physics. When I chatted with him it was clear he was 1) extremely bright and 2) very forgiving of my relative slowness (one of his polite rhetorical devices is to say, "So, you've probably also already considered that...", effectively giving me credit for something I had not actually considered but wish I had).

He shares the story of a professor who asked his students what they were going to do after graduation. "One said, 'I haven't decided. I found the companies I want to work for, and one of them's in Japan and one of them is in Germany, and I don't know which one I want to go to.' What it means is that they're thinking more in an international framework. They're ready to participate in a larger global corporation. Companies want people like that, that are open and ready to move and able to thrive in an international environment."

I exchanged emails with Harry Bowden, a former GT-L student who came into the program by way of a partnership between Georgia Tech and his school, Morehouse College. Talk about a person who is "open and ready to move"; last month he celebrated his 21st birthday in Madagascar, where he is studying ecology and conservation. "[At GT-L] I learned that I can do anything I put my mind to," he says. "I improved my French, not just by having to survive the trip to the grocery store CORA when I ran out of eggs, but by making French friends whom I speak to up till this day. International travel, especially to study, is an excellent way to gain an accurate awareness of the world around you. Not only this, but you grow through trial and error which, if you have a great sense of humor, can actually be fun!"

Undergrads, graduate students, and even high schoolers have been touched by the GT-L program. In addition to Georgia Tech students, every year a select group of students from Rockdale High School drop in for a week of sightseeing which includes a stop at GT-L (Rockdale partners with the Lycee de la Communication, or "Lycom" for short; students from the Lycee also drop into Rockdale for a week). The SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering) program, borne out of conversations between Tech professor Gary May and Morehouse College's Jim Brown with guidance from Tech's Steve McLaughlin and Voss, is a partnership between Tech, Morehouse, Spelman, Emory, and Clark Atlanta.

Why does Georgia Tech-Lorraine work with so many different types of U.S. students? Or, for that matter, why can't the United States, a country of 300 million, simply take care of its own technology research needs within its own borders? Voss outlines an interesting scenario:

"If you look at the demographics of the U.S. it's very clear that without increasing participation from a lot of groups we're not going to have enough engineers and scientists to handle our needs in the future. Right now the majority of graduate students in the U.S. come from Asia. In engineering maybe 36% of PhDs in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. All the rest are non-U.S. citizens. My personal opinion is that the best thing is to keep [the non-U.S. citizen PhDs] in the U.S. because they are really, really bright people and they would contribute a lot to America if they stayed here.

"But the question is, 'How many graduate students come to the U.S. from Japan?' And the answer right now is not very many. Especially in science and engineering. And the reason is because Japan has fully-developed science and engineering programs in their own country, so they don't really need to come to the U.S. anymore. So as China and India develop those abilities that's going to happen [in those countries also]. People are going to want to stay in their own country instead of wanting to go to the U.S. So where are the engineers going to come from?"

As companies go multinational, myriad cultural issues arise that are best considered and addressed by people with a more worldly perspective. Voss offers the following interesting example: "[The GT-L students] visited the engineering center for Goodyear in Luxembourg. There's a lot of engineering work going into tires. The EU requirements and the U.S. requirements are often different. You have different cars, cars are different sizes—different companies making cars. And you also have different road surfaces, different conditions, different goals. There might be cultural differences in terms of what kind of tire you want. The market for high performance tires here might be higher, might be lower. The road engineering here is very different."


Mais je ne parle...je ne parle...je ne...? "Uh, English, please?"

GT-L undergraduates receive English-language instruction much as they would in Atlanta. This is partly by design. Kevin McFall, a young and affable professor in the midst of a two-year stint at GT-L, notes that by removing the language issue many antsy students would be far more willing to consider an international study experience. "Students are always worried about their grades," he notes. "Like 'Oh gosh, I got a B instead of an A just because I didn't understand the language enough.' If you took that obstacle away then students would be more willing to go for it."

(Of course, most of the undergrads I spoke with are trying to make some sort of progress in their French speaking skills anyway, since they benefit from such progress every day in their daily interactions. But in short, if you're an undergrad afraid to study at Metz because you don't speak French, do not be.)

It's different for the masters students. They are working on a double degree, one from Georgia Tech and another from a French partner school. And going to a French partner school means speaking French. Masters student Katherine Rudell notes that at the beginning of her program "pretty much my whole entire class started with no French." But more French-heavy instruction begins to occur during the second year.

If you're an undergrad who doesn't have to speak French at GT-L, then what can you get out of the experience of being in France? Rudell, who is a member of the BdE [Bureau des Elèves—GT-L's student government] and thus is tasked with coming up with ways to introduce the students to French culture, says, "How much effort you put into it is how much you get out of it...You're not really integrated into the [French] culture because pretty much everything at Technopole...you can use English. There's no real culture because you live in the dorms and then you don't know how to speak the language. What the BdE is trying to do is to push that integration and to make sure that it's not just studying at Georgia Tech; it's also the experience you have in learning about the different cultures and the differences between the cultures."

Continue reading...
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Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Location, Location, Location/Getting Down to Business
Part Three: The Global Nature of Work/"Uh, English, Please?"
Part Four: The Student Perspective/So in Conclusion...