Jan 31, 2006 - Claremont, Calif. -

by Whitney Buchanan '07

The Clinic program at Harvey Mudd has provided a unique and invaluable experience for Mudd students for nearly 40 years. This coming summer, those opportunities will be expanded. In the hopes of better preparing students for a role in the emerging global markets, there will be a clinic program partnered with the University of Puerto Rico starting next year.

Three students from the Puerto Rican school and three Mudd students will come together to work on a project. The work will begin in the summer, with the Mudd students going to Puerto Rico for a month. This phase of the work will be primarily a team formation and planning stage, but the students will be required to take language and cultural history classes while they are there. The next month, the Puerto Rican students will come to Mudd for a month, continuing work on the project and also taking language and cultural classes. The students will return to their respective campuses for the academic year continuing collaboration via video conferencing. There will be dual liaisons and dual faculty advisors, one for each location.

The project for next year is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, and is a project on computational fluid dynamics, so the team for next year will be made up of both engineers and math majors. There is a possibility of a second project focusing on bio-engineering as well.

This first year is a sort of test run for the program. If it goes well, the program may expanded to include projects with Japan and China in the coming years.