From healthcare challenges in rural Guatemala to the semiconductor industry in Taiwan and Japan, CU Denver students can take their engineering education into the world.

With courses in calculus, physics, labs, design and other important prerequisites, as an engineering student, you might be wondering where study abroad fits. At CU Denver’s College of Engineering, Design, and Computing, the answer is clear: directly into an engineering education.

During the 2026-27 academic year, CU Denver students have opportunities to take engineering beyond Denver and into rural healthcare settings in Guatemala and technology centers in Taiwan and Japan.

The experiences are different, but both put students closer to questions engineers encounter throughout their careers: Who will use what we design? How does context change a technical solution? What happens when assumptions that work in one place do not work somewhere else?

Check out these ways to make the globe into your classroom while still working towards a CEDC degree.

Guatemala: Designing for Global Health

In rural Guatemala, healthcare becomes an engineering design challenge.

Catalyzing Global Health Through Medical Innovation, offered again in May 2027, gives students the opportunity to examine global health and medical equity while working alongside local youth leaders and healthcare professionals.

Students observe healthcare delivery across several settings, including home visits, rural clinics and public hospitals. That experience provides something difficult to recreate in a traditional classroom: the opportunity to understand a problem in the environment where a potential solution would actually need to work.

Students then engage in the engineering design process with local collaborators to develop practical responses to health challenges facing rural communities.

The work requires more than discovering what is technically possible, students must consider who will use it, what resources are available to support it and whether a proposed solution can make a sustainable difference.

For students interested in biomedical engineering, healthcare, medicine, public health, research or graduate study, that context matters. An engineering decision that seems straightforward in Denver can look very different when infrastructure, healthcare access and available resources change.

Beyond the project work, students experience Guatemala through visits to Lake Atitlán and Antigua, cultural tours of coffee plantations and Mayan sites, and opportunities for hiking and exploration.

Together, those experiences connect technical problem-solving with a deeper understanding of the people and places engineering is meant to serve.

Taiwan and Japan: Seeing the Global Technology Economy Up Close

Some of the technologies engineering and computing students study in Denver depend on industries and supply chains operating thousands of miles away.

ENGR 3600: International Perspectives of Technology and Culture brings students closer to that global ecosystem through travel in Taiwan and Japan, two major centers of technology, manufacturing and innovation.

The three-credit course asks students to examine technology in a broader context while experiencing two distinct cultures firsthand.

Company visits connect students with industries shaping modern computing and engineering, including an opportunity to visit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers.

For students studying engineering or computing during the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and other computing-intensive technologies, seeing the semiconductor industry firsthand can put classroom concepts into a much larger context.

But the course is about more than seeing where technology is made. Students explore how technology shapes societies — and how culture, economics and local priorities shape technological development in return.

That perspective matters because technology never stays inside a laboratory. It enters workplaces, transportation systems, economies, communities and people’s daily lives. Understanding that larger context can help future engineers make more thoughtful decisions about what they design and how those designs are ultimately used.

Throughout Taiwan and Japan, students experience the intersection of technology and culture through company visits, museums, food, transportation and independent exploration.

They can ride high-speed rail into Taiwan’s mountainous regions, travel to Mount Fuji and visit cultural institutions such as the Tokyo National Museum and National Palace Museum in Taipei. Food offers another way to experience each place, from ramen and sushi in Japan to dumplings, bubble tea and Taiwan’s night markets.

Students also have free weekends to explore destinations such as Akihabara, Shibuya, Tokyo Tower and Taipei 101.

The flight from Taipei to Tokyo is included in the program. Students are responsible for airfare to Taipei and home from Tokyo.

Engineering Without Borders

In Guatemala, students can see how healthcare access, culture and local resources shape engineering decisions. In Taiwan and Japan, they can experience how technology, manufacturing, infrastructure and culture intersect inside two of the world’s major technology economies.

Neither experience asks students to leave engineering behind when they leave Denver. They ask students to see it differently.

Because becoming an engineer is about more than mastering equations, software or technical systems. It is also about understanding the environments those systems enter, collaborating with people whose experiences differ from your own and learning to solve problems when the assumptions you started with no longer apply.

For CU Denver students, studying abroad offers a chance to practice exactly that — while discovering how much larger an engineering classroom can become.

Ready to take your engineering education abroad? Explore CU Denver’s 2026-27 global study opportunities and start planning early to find an experience that fits your degree, interests and career goals.

For CU Denver students ready to take that next step, the world can become part of the classroom.

Ready to take your engineering education abroad? Explore CU Denver’s 2026-27 global study opportunities and start planning early to find an experience that fits your degree, interests and career goals.