Study Abroad: Sustainable Engineering in Berlin

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In a first joint partnership, Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and the department of German studies will launch a new multidisciplinary study-abroad program focused on sustainable engineering in Berlin, Germany.

The new program, “Green City: Sustainable Engineering in Berlin,” will offer engineering coursework, taught in English, with German language and culture studies. Students will be placed in homestays with local German families to enable full language and cultural immersion.

“Our program takes interdisciplinary learning to a new level, as it gives students the opportunity to explore central engineering concepts through the medium of the German language and culture,” said Associate Professor of German Studies Petra McGillen. “We’ll be in a setting where sustainability is a lived practice, not a chapter in a textbook, and I look forward to seeing engineering and language learning come together in this setting in meaningful and exciting ways.”

Professor of Engineering Petra Bonfert-Taylor adds: “We are specifically studying Berlin as a green city and its sustainability practices, which are so far ahead of what we do in the United States. Berlin is a bustling, amazing city where people are much more conscientious of their environment.”

The program, expected to launch in spring of 2022, will be co-led by Bonfert-Taylor and McGillen. Mary Tobin ’20 Th’20, a recent engineering graduate, helped drive early interest in the program, including by conducting student surveys.