Session M3H 1-4244-0257-3/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE October 28 – 31, 2006, San Diego, CA 36 th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference M3H-20 UNIBRAL, an Educational and Research Cooperation between Brazil and Germany Nasser Jazdi 1 , Vicente F. de Lucena Jr 2 and Peter Göhner 3 1,3 Universität Stuttgart, Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering, Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany, 1 Nasser.Jazdi@ias.uni- stuttgart.de and 3 Peter.Goehner@ias.uni-stuttgart.de 2 Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Av. Gal. Rodrigo Otávio, 3000, Aleixo, 69077-000 Manaus – AM – Brazil, vicente@ufam.edu.br Abstract - UNIBRAL is a program of cooperation between Germany and Brazil sponsored by CAPES Foundation, a body of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, jointly with DAAD - Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, a German academic cooperation body. Many Brazilian and German Universities are currently participating in this program. This paper describes a successful experience under the UNIBRAL Program between the University of Amazonas in Manaus-Brazil and the University of Stuttgart in Germany. This program provides an opportunity to increase cooperation between these two universities aiming at introducing new curriculum guidelines and new courses, on the one hand, and increasing and renewing practical experiments, on the other. In this specific case, the expertise of the German University was useful in bringing about a successful educational transfer to the Brazilian University. Index Terms – Educational Transfer, Software Engineering Education, Electrical Engineering Programs, Internationalization of Academic Curricula INTRODUCTION UNIBRAL is a cooperative program between Brazilians and Germans universities. It is an agreement between two Ministries of Education one in the Federative Republic of Brazil and the other in the Federal Republic of Germany. The executive organization in Brazil is CAPES [1]. In Germany, DAAD [2] is responsible for the execution of this program. This paper describes one cooperation project under Unibral between the University of Stuttgart, situated in Baden- Württemberg, in southern Germany and the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), located in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon Rain Forest. Stuttgart is one of the most developed cities in Germany with a consolidated industry and a modern university. Manaus is a new city located in the middle of the Amazon Forest in Brazil. The industrial sector in Manaus is mainly devoted to the assembly of electronic devices. As an example, 100% of the Brazilian production of TVs comes from the Manaus Industrial hub. Although the university in Manaus is quite old for Brazilian standards, UFAM was founded in 1910 and is the oldest in Brazil [3], the electrical engineering course is only 30 years old. In the last few years the Federal University of Amazonas and the local research and development companies haves been facing some challenges having to do with an increase in the need for new technologies and a better partnership with other more advanced centers. One of these challenges has been the introduction and consolidation of a center for the development of software and industrial automation systems. The UNIBRAL program has provided the opportunity for increasing cooperation between these two universities in this new area of interest. The introduction of new curriculum guidelines and new courses represents a sizeable challenge and can only be successful if the people involved have enough expertise to face up to the challenge [4]. However, expertise alone may not be enough. Practical experience is required to prevent the adoption of mistaken approaches and a waste of time and effort. The state of the art in electrical engineering and information science applied to industrial applications points towards topics like Industrial Automation and Software Engineering. The Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Programs offered by UFAM wish to improve their expertise in those topics by introducing new lectures and laboratories, and, thus improving the quality of their graduated students. The time-proven experience of the academic and research faculty at IAS has helped the achievement of the intended objective. The main goal of this project as presented to the UNIBRAL program was to enable the intensive exchange of technical personnel involved on the teaching of such topics. On the one side, the materials used at IAS has been adapted to real situation at UFAM, and, on the other, a detailed discussion on the courses involved was carried out aiming at improving those courses. Said cooperation was based not only on the technical staff of both universities, but also on the exchange of students, who have played an important role for the success of this project. They helped implementing the laboratory practices and contributed towards an increase of the academic level of the courses involved. The selection of students was based on rigid standards of quality, conditioned to such items as no previous fails, good English or German language skills, and a minimum GPA. These conditions had already caused an improvement in the overall academic quality in the performance of the students involved. During the four years of the program, both sides have agreed on a common curriculum in these courses, including formal lectures and laboratories. The results of this first step