Aug 18, 2016
Now in its second year, the Fulbright Intercultural Communication Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology gives 20 Bachelor’s students of German Duale Hochschulen (which combine university studies and practical training at companies) the opportunity to experience life and studying on a U. S. campus. The participants have diverse backgrounds in technical sciences and/or business and together attend classes on intercultural communication, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
The 2016 class just completed their three-week program in July and will soon report on their experiences at a debriefing session in Berlin, where they had previously also been prepared for the program during an orientation meeting. Their interactive classes in the U. S. again included sessions on evidence-based entrepreneurship where students were asked to formulate a business thesis, interview potential customers, and, on this basis, develop a product that actually meets an existing need. Other classes focused on refining students’ communicative skills in a cross-cultural context and teaching them how to analyze and work with business case studies.
The program was complemented by company visits (e. g. to Siemens and ThyssenKrupp), sightseeing trips (e. g. to the World of Coca Cola, the Georgia Aquarium, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change), and a Baseball game of the local Atlanta Braves team.
The call for applications for the 2017 program will be announced this coming fall. For more information on the program, please check Summer Institute für Studierende an Dualen Hochschulen.
