Engineering Spanish Program (ESP) is a five-year program at the University of Connecticut which includes a six-month internship in Spain and leads to a dual degree: a BA in Spanish and a BS in Engineering. ESP is open to any qualified engineering student and does not require previous knowledge of Spanish. For those students with 3 or more years of Spanish in high school, they will start at the 3000 level Spanish courses.

While designing ESP, the faculty and staff evaluated the success of our EUROTECH program. They found that the EUROTECH model could be reproduced in Spain and other countries. ESP is the first to duplicate the EUROTECH program.

In March 2014 during a trip to Valencia, Spain, the Engineering Spanish Program (ESP) was born. Professor Gustavo Nanclares from the Spanish section and Brian Schwarz, co-director of EUROTECH program, traveled to Spain to solidify the program at Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain.

Former General Electric Directorate commented: “ESP is just what is needed in an ever-increasing global market. This program will help engineers communicate with our global manufacturing facilities. The engineer of today and even more so of the future has to be proficient not only in his technical field but has to have a good working knowledge of computers and at least one major foreign language and understand the associated culture of Spanish speaking countries and their people.”

Upon their graduation, ESP engineers will not just bring sophisticated technical know-how to their jobs but also the foreign language skills and an international awareness that American companies are finding more and more desirable. The internship experience in Spain is structured in such a way that students become familiar with the international culture of employers and start up companies.  ESP graduates will have the knowledge and experience to play important roles in the ongoing efforts to revamp the American system of labor training.