Expanding horizons
With academic options growing, more and more engineering students are studying abroad
By Alyssa Schmitt
Nathan Kralik, second from right, made many friends while studying in France—and walked on to the baseketball team.
Over spring break in 2023, while students packed and vacated campus, a small team from Case Western Reserve’s Office of Education Abroad and the School of Engineering packed for something else: a marathon of campus visits across Europe. They met with university faculties in Ireland, Spain, and England, walked through campuses, examined course catalogs, and mapped out what would become an expansive study-abroad program designed specifically for engineering students.
Leading this expedition was Autumn Beechler Stebing, the former Director of Education Abroad at CWRU. She organized the trip with the goal to make studying abroad more accessible to engineering students, who had often been left out of a popular college experience.
More than one-third of CWRU students opt to study abroad, typically for a semester. Students majoring in business or the humanities scan a broad menu of options at schools and universities around the globe.
It’s always been a smaller world for engineering majors. Faced with rigid degree requirements, most stayed home and followed the program. Those who wished to study abroad had to independently find universities with relevant courses and meticulously confirm that credits would transfer back to Case, leaving no room for error.
Then, CWRU’s study-abroad team opened a wider door. During the European trip, Case faculty met with faculty at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain, University College Dublin in Ireland, and The University of Sheffield in England.
They worked to ensure that the new programs align with policies and requirements of the Case School of Engineering, from credit transfers to how grades are evaluated.
“It was a lot of digging in really deep into the syllabi, into the sequencing of the courses, and determining what would work and which institution would work,” said Beechler Stebing.
The result was the fall 2024 launch of a comprehensive course road map for students in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, data science, electrical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering. These plans show students when they can study abroad and which courses align with their graduation requirements, creating a fail-safe option if they choose to take part.
The impact was immediate: During the 2024-25 school year, about 24% of engineering students studied abroad. That’s an all-time high.
The surge in participation echoes the success of an earlier effort. In the 2016–17 academic year, Beechler Stebing and Professor Dan Lacks—now Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary and
International Initiatives for CWRU—created a study-abroad pathway for chemical engineering students by analyzing past destinations and credit transfers.
Their four-year plan built in a semester abroad in the United Kingdom at either the University of Manchester or the University of Edinburgh, resulting in a 30% jump in chemical engineering students studying abroad.
“(Dan) and I have been talking consistently about how do we do this again with more majors. This is very, very successful,” said Beechler Stebing, who left the university this past summer to become director of campus partnerships for Worldstrides, an educational travel company. “We selected three majors that touch the majority of engineering students – computer science and data science, biomedical, and mechanical and aerospace – those are some of the largest engineering majors we have.”
Once COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted and international travel resumed, Beechler Stebing set out to expand the mapped study abroad plans for other engineering majors, which culminated in the 2023 trip.
About 35% of CWRU students study abroad, an adventure that often starts at the fall Study Abroad Fair.
THE VALUE FOR ENGINEERS
One student who benefited from a predesigned new road map was Sabrina Castaneda, a fourth-year chemical engineering major who studied at the University of Manchester in spring 2024. With her courses already mapped out and guaranteed to transfer, the process was easy, she says.
“I’m a lab assistant for one of the chemical engineering labs here so it’s very interesting that (I) can do all of this and still be on track (to graduate),” she says.
At the University of Manchester, Castaneda quickly noticed the difference: classes focused almost entirely on working through equations, while readings and conceptual learning were left to students outside of class – an inversion of the structure she knew at Case.
With most of her grade tied to final exams, she sometimes encountered new material while classmates were simply reviewing. The challenge served as a catalyst to strengthen her communication skills by asking questions, comparing approaches, and collaborating on group projects to keep pace.
“If we’re doing homework together, I’d have to (say), ‘Hey guys, give me a second, I have to really quickly go back so I can understand what you did there,’” she explains.
While studying abroad might seem like an added challenge to an already demanding course load, Beechler Stebing explains that it helps prepare engineering students for a career centered on problem solving.
“Their whole job is to solve problems,” she said. “What better way to set a student up for success than to give them practice problem solving in new environments?”
That kind of real-world problem-solving was exactly what Johnathan Chiu, a third-year civil engineering student with an environmental concentration, experienced during his time abroad at the University of Sydney in Australia during the spring of 2025.
He joined a group community project as part of his studies through the university focused on improving community and sustainability. With many students commuting from near-by areas, his team spent the semester developing a solution for students to feel more connected to campus.
“Working on a team with so many diverse perspectives, and just learning about a whole other world and how I could use my multicultural perspective to contribute, that was pretty valuable,” Chiu says.
Australia was a deliberate choice for Chiu, who wanted to study sustainability in the country often considered a global leader in the field. Immersed in new approaches to environmental challenges, he came back to Case’s campus with momentum. He started an environmental consulting club to help other clubs build sustainability in their processes, which led him to become a sustainability ambassador at Case.
“One of the biggest quotes that stood out to me (at Sydney) was that in order to get people to care about something you care about is to connect it to something they care about,” he says.
Chiu returned from Australia with a clearer sense of purpose, a common experience for students studying aboard. Across Europe, another student was finding his own transformation taking shape.
Sabrina Castaneda, a chemical engineering major, toured London in the spring of 2023 while studying at the University of Manchester.
Johnathan Chiu tried snorkeling while studying abroad in Sydney, Australia.
EXPLORING CULTURAL ROOTS
In Italy, Cataldo Strangi, a fourth-year biomedical engineering student, discovered a new way to approach problem solving during the spring 2024 semester. At the Polytechnic of Milan, his instructors emphasized exploring the theory behind equations and why they work, a contrast to the U.S. focus he was used to, which approached problem-solving through how equations function.
“It’s given me a more holistic understanding of the way that you can look at a different concept through multiple lenses through both an analytical and theoretical lens,” he explains.
Being born in Italy and moving to the U.S. around age seven, Strangi, who is fluent in Italian, wanted to go back and get the experience of being in college and living in a big Italian city. While there, he took a class on biomaterials for prosthesis.
“It introduced me to the mechanical and material selection design for anything from breast implants to knee and hip replacements,” he explains.
The course sparked a new passion and an interest he now hopes to pursue further – potentially all the way to a PhD.
Wanting to study abroad was something Nathan Kralik, a first-year aerospace engineering master’s student, knew he wanted to do during his undergraduate career before he knew what major he would study.
“Once I figured out my major, I came to the realization that I had to figure out how to take some classes (abroad), or stay extra time, which I didn’t really want to do,” he explains. “I figured it could be interesting to learn engineering, which is a more challenging thing to learn, but learn it in a foreign country.”
Inspired by his father, who studied in France during college, Kralik chose to attend INSA Lyon for the fall 2023 semester. French was already a second language for him, but he wasn’t as familiar with the academic terms. Luckily, he could use his English to seek clarity.
Kralik immersed himself fully in campus life. He conducted mechanical engineering research—which he realized he didn’t like as much and instead solidified his focus on aerospace engineering—and joined the university’s basketball team as a walk on.
Looking back on balancing athletics, research and coursework, Kralik says the experience is worth it and recommends it to any student considering studying abroad.
“My friends that I made in France are people that I’m still actively friends with two years later,” he said. “All of the experiences I had – whether it be traveling or playing basketball or working on this research project with the professor – all of those things, I have very fond memories of. … If you’re in a different country, you’ve kind of got to figure things out for yourself, which I think makes you a more independent person, which I view as a positive thing,”
As they seek to study abroad, engineering majors are finding more options.
A BRIGHT FUTURE
Today, mechanical and biomedical engineering rank among the top 10 majors participating in study abroad at CWRU. Valerie Rambin, the interim director of Education Abroad, expects the options to continue to grow, thanks to Case faculty who do the laborious work of examining engineering programs in other countries and mapping how they match up with Case.
“It’s exciting for us to see the passion and commitment that faculty have for this program,” she said. “We want students to have a variety of offerings, and so do they.”
As more students participate and express interest in other locations, she said the study-abroad options could be built out to more universities in more nations of the world, including Sweden, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, and Taiwan.
Alyssa Schmitt is a Cleveland freelance writer. For more information on study-abroad options for engineering students, go HERE.
@2020 Case Alumnus Magazine
Case Alumni Association, Inc.
All rights reserved.