Being an international student, working in an Australian workplace with intercultural and global colleagues provided me with the platform to practice professional behaviour and ethics. During my three-month placement internship with Optik Engineering Consultancy UTS, I was placed in a team of eight. Our team had engineers from diverse background. It was a combination of four postgraduate students with four undergraduates, out of which there were three biomedical engineers and five mechanical engineers. I was a bit worried about how I will be able to practice professional norms with a large group of multi-cultural people from Bangladesh, China, India, and Nepal. But after first couple of days of knowing each other, it was easier for me to understand the team dynamics. Optik Engineering Consultancy at UTS accustomed me to practice professionalism in my chosen field of biomedical engineering with its application based on robotics. This internship also provided me with an opportunity to apply my academic knowledge in ‘real-world’ contexts, work-based learning, and other kinds of experiential (Jones 2013).

​

During this period, I observed closely the working culture of my teammates. Every single one of them had a different approach to solving a problem. There was a time during my internship where we had to select one design of the product we were developing, over the other two designs. During the meeting discussion, my peers had a different way of looking at the advantage and disadvantage of the designs. They were more focused on selecting the design that will be more appropriate to be produced at a prototype level, whereas I was looking at the bigger picture which involved the final material to be used for small scale production. Although both the perspective was correct, only during discussion did we figure out a way to incorporate both these points. This incident was something that I took a learning from.

​

Being an experienced product development engineer myself, I brought punctuality and reliability to the table. During the initial team meetings, every member within the group had selected me to be their group leader. This was my responsibility to look after the development of the team members. I made sure to let every member know the value of the work we were doing, and how our contribution will benefit the healthcare community. Instead of forcing them to come and work everyday at the stipulated time, or penalising them if they were late to work, I had taken the decision of giving them their space and freedom. This was my professional culture which I had imparted to them. Not only did we successfully complete the project and handed over to the clients in an organized manner, but we were also way ahead of our time to submit all the reports and findings to them. We advertised our work during the tradeshow in a structured way, which led the Deputy Dean for Faculty of Engineering and IT at UTS to appreciate us.

​

My practice of professionalism within intercultural and global context not only benefited me, but my entire team as well.

​

REFERENCE

​

Elspeth Jones (2013) Internationalization and employability: the role of intercultural experiences in the development of transferable skills, Public Money & Management, 33:2, 95-104, DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2013.763416