CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

Globalization of modern economy, science andeducation brings to life new requirements to youngprofessionals. The competitiveness of chemical engineerdepends on his cross-cultural competence, which includesknowledge of foreign languages, cutting edge technologies,global market with its key players and strategies of buildinglong-term relationships with foreign partners. Therefore,development of cross-cultural competence throughinterdisciplinary projects becomes an urgent issue inengineering education, where different countries findvarious approaches. A universal model of cross-culturalcompetence development can be based on the experience ofmulti-cultural regions and scaled up to international format.One of the multi-cultural regions of the Russian Federationis the Republic of Tatarstan, where the main ethnic groupsare Russians, who are Orthodox Christians, and Tatars, whoare Muslims. The paper describes approaches todevelopment of universal cross-cultural competence inengineering education in Tatarstan, at Kazan StateTechnological University.Index Terms ⎯ cross-cultural competence, engineeringeducation, multi-cultural regions, universal model.