CEE - Academics

The Cornell-Cantabria Exchange Program was developed by the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Cornell University with the goal of helping Cornell College of Engineering students spend their junior year in Santander, Spain at the Universidad de Cantabria. Check out this video introduction to the University of Cantabria in English and Spanish. Information on the University in English, can be found here.  The program officially launched in August 2007 with eight members of the Class of 2009 participating. Students who are interested in this experience are encouraged to fill out the survey of initial interest (link below).  Anyone interested in studying Engineering or working as an engineer in Spain is encouraged to complete the survey as we have advised and found opportunities for Cornell Engineering students to carry out summer internships as well as find permanent jobs in Spain.

The proposed program was developed around School of Civil & Environmental Engineering core course requirements but students in other majors (the first group of students included CEE, BEE and independent Engineering majors) interested in the program should fill out the survey and begin looking at the flexibility of their own major for study abroad.

The program allows up to 20 Cornell College of Engineering students to participate in the program each year. The first group of students arrived in Santander, Spain in August of 2007 and took two immersion Spanish language courses (one during the month of August and one the first three weeks of September).  A second group of students arrived in Santander in time to take just the September immersion Spanish language course. The language requirement for applying to the program is the completion of SpanR 123 or its equivalent or demonstration of this background through scoring a minimum of 56 on the Language Placement Spanish (LPS) exam offered online by the Department of Romance Studies.

The group of Cornell Juniors is paired with Universidad de Cantabria Engineering third year students and the total group of students begins taking fall semester classes around the 4th week of September.  The student group takes four Cornell CEE equivalent junior year engineering core courses, to be taught in English, and the Cornell group takes a fifth course in Spanish language taught entirely in Spanish, equivalent to SpanR 3xx level, or another liberal distribution studies course taught in Spanish.

The second semester begins around the 3rd week of February and again four core CEE Cornell equivalent junior year courses are offered in English and a liberal studies course, developed especially for this program on Prehistoric European Art, is taught in Spanish. The Universidad de Cantabria together with the Instituto del Prehistoria (Institute of Prehistory) house many of the leading world exports in this field, due to their proximity to the Altamira Cave (a UNESCO World Heritage site, 30 km from Santander).

Students with the language skills to take regularly scheduled Universidad de Cantabria courses may do so at any time as students are fully registered Cantabria students. Our previous students found that by second  semester, they had sufficient language skills to be able to take courses in Spanish if they were interested.

The second semester final exams finish in June and interested students then have the option of being placed in a Spanish engineering firm for an internship experience before returning to Cornell to complete their senior year in Ithaca.  Many Cornell students have participated in these internships.

The Cantabria students paired with the Cornell students in Santander will spend their 4th year at Cornell forming a true exchange program. A primary goal of the program is to create opportunities for the entire group of students to continue to interact and support each other during this second year. The first group of Cantabria students arrived in Ithaca in August 2008 and lived in West Campus. We take advantage of the unique community that West Campus offers to bring the entire Cornell-Cantabria group together regularly for meals and social functions.

If you are interested in this program and would like to be on the e-mail list about future meetings and social opportunities, please fill out the survey here. Please contact Prof. Todd Cowen in CEE, if you have any questions about the proposed program or studying engineering in Spain. He would be more than happy to hear from you and could also put you in touch with former program participants so you can ask them about their experiences.