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September 22, 2006 Vol. 77, no.
6F
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| SIGHTSEEING: ME senior Anisha Jain and CEE senior Eric Schwartz in Denmark last year. ERIC SCHWARTZ PHOTO |
Engineering in England
CEE senior completes year abroad in academic and cultural classroom
One great thing about studying engineering in Europe, explains Eric Schwartz, is it’s all in metric. “That was absolutely wonderful,” says the CEE senior who spent 10 months last year as an international student at the University of Birmingham in England as part of Berkeley Programs for Study Abroad. During his time there, Schwartz discovered other niceties, such as the “cuppa” (cup of tea shared with friends), shawarma (Middle Eastern pita sandwich) and ease of travel.
“I gained a lot of respect for Europeans,” he says. “I think they’re pretty mature. There isn’t a great feeling toward America over there right now, but they distinguish individual Americans from the country.”
Ever since he was a teenager, Schwartz wanted to study abroad. Despite Berkeley Engineering’s rigorous curriculum, which makes it somewhat onerous to squeeze in a year overseas, he applied to go his junior year, choosing Birmingham because it had a good engineering reputation. He learned the university was about the size of Berkeley and hosted a sizeable population of international students. Once he arrived, he lived in a dorm with English students and took classes in structural and environmental engineering.
Not long into school, Schwartz, who was the lone American in his classes, discovered that the British methodology for teaching was quite different. For example in his structures class, he only went to class two hours a week, had three labs and five problem sets the entire year and no assigned textbook. “The professors basically want you to study on your own almost entirely from material covered in their lectures,” he explains. “There was a lot of self-study and, after being used to the system here, it was hard to get used to.”
Though much of the material he learned was universal to engineering, he did run into some geographic differences, such as working on a project that involved European Union building codes. And he says he learned to appreciate how Europe solved problems differently in areas such as energy and sustainable development.
Of course, study abroad is as much about learning outside the classroom as inside, and Schwartz took advantage of his time there. He traveled often to cosmopolitan London, he says, taking in museums, clubs and Indian food. He also explored Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic and Morocco. (He visited ME senior Anisha Jain in Scandinavia, where she was studying in a Swedish program.) England offered its own delights. The L.A. native discovered frost (“What is that?” he asked when he first saw the white layer) and the joy of grabbing a pint with friends after class.
Schwartz says he dreams of working for an international company after he graduates and hopes his year abroad will help him land a job that comes with travel. “I would definitely recommend engineers go abroad,” he says, “even if it means taking an extra semester to graduate. It’s just good to see how engineering is done in other countries.”
Program deadlines begin October 6! For more information go to http://ias.berkeley.edu/bpsa/.
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