College should be a time of discovery, adventure and embracing new ideas, but many students have hardly left their home states, let alone the country.
Philip Johnson, associate professor of engineering at The University of Alabama, saw this problem and decided to expose students to different ways of life outside the United States. He founded a UA Engineers Without Borders chapter, now known as Student Engineers in Action, in 2005 so students could put into practice the concepts they learned in class while learning about other cultures. Since then, approximately 80 UA students have taken seven service-abroad trips to Peru, the Dominican Republic and Vietnam, in addition to undertaking domestic projects.