The final editorial touches have been completed on two reports: “Examination of Sialidase Inhibition in Membrane Processing of Recombinant Glycoproteins” and “Computational Fluid Dynamic Models for Roll-To-Roll Transistor Production Process.” With the delivery of the two reports to Global Clinic sponsors Amgen and Hewlett-Packard, the work of the two teams of HMC and University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) students over the last year is finished. It has been for me personally the most satisfying year of my 22 years as a faculty member at the college.

What started as a dream three years ago became reality this year. The dream was that we could take the successful college Clinic model of sponsored team projects to the next stage: preparing our students to work on international team projects with team members from different countries, cultures and institutional backgrounds; with different disciplinary interests and different languages, but with a common purpose of shaping the future together. Here are some of the inaugural year’s milestones:

April/May 2006
The HMC student team is chosen from an applicant pool of 19 senior students—for the Amgen project: Mackenzie Miller, Felicia Nan and Heather Schalliol; for the HP project, Philip Cheung, Jakob Spjut and Christina Tang. Carol Brandt, the Director of International and Special Programs at Pitzer College, runs the Summer Program of language and cultural activities during July when the teams return from Puerto Rico. Carol holds an orientation session for the students dealing with the issues of cultural immersion and adaptation in Puerto Rico, preparing the students for the inevitabilities of culture shock and its beneficial, if sometimes painful, effects.

June 2006
The HMC teams travel to Puerto Rico and have the exhilarating experience of flying in a small, six-seat airplane as they travel across the island, from San Juan to the University of Puerto Rico campus at Mayagüez. The teams meet their fellow student team members from UPRM: for the Amgen project, Elisa Alfaro, Solimar Diaz and Kenneth Estevez, biotechnology seniors; for the HP project, Luis Acevedo, Wilfredo Mercado and Aisha Nieves, mechanical engineering seniors. The teams live in dorms at UPRM and start immediately on a full program of activities, including Spanish language classes starting at 8 a.m. every morning!

About half their time is spent in daily lectures and labs on biochemistry and bioprocesses for the Amgen team, fluid mechanics for the HP team, and literature research on their projects. On weekends, Gildreth Gonzalez, director of Inter-national Student Services at UPRM, organizes trips to museums, art galleries, cultural centers and, of course, the Puerto Rican beaches.

July 2006
The HMC/UPRM student teams travel to Claremont to continue the work on their projects and to take part in intensive language and cultural activities. On the way, all the students enjoy the generous hospitality of Mackenzie’s parents for a memorable July 4th weekend on a Texas ranch. At the end of the month, both teams have completed extensive project plans detailing their work for the coming academic year, which they present at the company sponsor sites at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and at HP Research Labs in Palo Alto, Calif.

September 2006
The teams return to their respective campuses to start the academic year. After the close bonding experience of the summer, the teams now face the challenge of pushing the project forward in “virtual” mode with weekly tele/videoconferences with one another. Here is where all the planning of the summer pays off. The separate teams manage to work in close parallel, comparing results, offering help and mutual encouragement when the project milestones come round throughout the year.

May 2007
The teams complete their final reports and meet up again in Claremont for Projects Day. The HP team travels to Palo Alto to present their report to the company liaisons, and the Amgen team travels to Juncos in Puerto Rico to give their final presentation.

As I sat observing the teams’ final report presentations, I felt a tremendous debt of gratitude to these pioneering students who volunteered for the first Global Clinic projects at Harvey Mudd College. Their joyful enthusiasm, generosity of outlook and sheer hard work has set the gold standard for the conduct of the Global Clinic program in the future. It has been an unforgettable year.

Next Stop: Singapore

Another Global Clinic will begin this summer with Shenda Baker, professor of chemistry, leading the program while Anthony Bright is on sabbatical (2007–08).

Three students from HMC and three from the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be teaming up on a project sponsored by Applied Biosystems, a producer of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) instrumentation. The students have been asked to design and build a prototype of a low-cost, robust, real-time PCR instrument for the educational market.

HMC juniors Jeffrey Rubenstein, Alexandria Kealey and Jonathan Chen left June 1 for Singapore, where they will begin the process of getting to know their Singapore teammates, learn about the culture and research the Clinic project. After one month, the students from Singapore—Cedric Tan Kai Wei, Chang Ci’En Sharon and Sui Xiaodi—will return with Mudd students to experience American culture and to work on the Clinic project. The NUS students, who are being advised by NUS faculty members Roger Tan Choon Ee and Maxey Chung, will return to Singapore July 28. As with the first Global Clinic, students will continue communicating via e-mail, video and teleconferencing, and multi-conferencing with the company liaison.