Stefan Rehle's Experiences in UMKC

The Coursework

It is fact, that the courses at UMKC (in general, there might be exceptions, too) require much more work than the courses in Germany do, because there is a lot of homework, presentations, projects and exams. I was near the limit of what I can manage with 9 credit hours = 3 classes in Kansas City, I think there wouldn't have been any time for only one more class. At home I have around 8 classes every semester with nearly 30 hours a week in total. Of course I needed more time in Kansas City to learn the stuff because of the language and all that, but the difference in credit hours shows that we had to do a lot of additional work for the courses at UMKC which we don't have at home in this magnitude. I think the difficulty is not the difficulty itself but to get the work done properly under the enormous time pressure. In Germany we have perhaps one project in the whole semester, several labs and the finals, that's it, no homework and also no exams during the semester. In K.C. we had nearly the same stress during the whole semester as we have it in Germany in the five or six weeks before the finals. There is not a big difference in the difficulty of the final exams, I think in Germany the exams are more difficult than here, but perhaps it only seems like that, because the advantage here is that you work with the learned stuff (homework) and repeat it for the tests, so it's not as much effort to study for the finals as it is if you just heared it once and have to learn the stuff of a whole semester for the final. But that's what normal students do if they are not pushed by pressure such as homework.

And here is the point: In America students are pushed to study, in Germany it's there own responsibility, if you want to be better than average you have to study a lot on your own initiative, in America - that's how it was for me - you get very good grades if you do the tasks assigned by the teacher properly. I'm not sure which system I like more. The German gives you more freedom to organize your studying on your own, but you mustn't be lazy, otherwise you have lost, whereas you are "guided to your success" in the American system. On the other hand you can say in Germany everything depends on only one Final per course. If you have a bad day, or the exam is not what you expected, your studying was into the wrong direction or something like that, you have a problem. I think another advantage of the American system is that if you repeat the stuff again and again with homework or for midterms and finals you keep it better in mind than if you learn it once for one exam. I think, students here keep more of the learned stuff than me and my fellow students in Germany do. All in all I would answer the question like this: Studying in Germany is more difficult than in America, but studying in America is more work than in Germany.

About the Program

I liked that UMKC gave us the chance to study for one semester for reduced tuition fees, without the Partner-University - Award it wouldn't have been possible for me to spend a semester in K.C.

Another good point was that it was taken care of us, Kate Wozniak, the international students - coordinator and the ISAO helped us a lot especially at the beginning. The International-Student - Program seems to be well-organized.

What I miss a little bit is that American students come to our German University, maybe UMKC could do something that the partnership is more like a "give and take".

The Labs and Interactions with Faculty/Students

I only had one lab and it wasn't very different from what I know from Germany. But the interaction with faculty and the relationship between teachers and students is another one than in Germany. Maybe because the Mechanical-Engineering faculty at UMKC is relatively small, the relationship between faculty and students is very close and personal, Mrs.Jo Ann Day and Dr. McClernon seem to know every student and they were very helpful and friendly.

It's quite the same with the teachers: The classes are small (10-25 students per class, compared to ca. 60 in Germany), the teachers know their students very well and offer individual help. That's different in Germany, seldom professors know names of their students, the student is one out of many, a number so to speak.

It's also absolutely not common in Germany to use the first name of a teacher, the relationship between teacher and student is much more formal than I experienced it at UMKC. Interactions with other students were very positive, too. Most of them were very friendly and openhearted, they helped us if we had problems, we were invited and found friends among our fellow students.

Other Recommendations

If you ask me if I had the choice I had one year before (the choice to go to UMKC once) again - I hope you know which difference I mean - the answer would be Yes. BUT, during the assignment-process I had to send the courses I wanted to take to the international-student-coordinator

I chose them from the course catalog on the internet. Apparently nobody was interested in this list, because I didn't get any negative response, but had to experience a big disappointment when I arrived: Only one of the 4 chosen courses was offered, Power Generating Systems, Vehicle Dynamics and Composite Materials for example were not offered although they were in the course catalog for fall 2007. So I had to take courses like Biomechanics which don't fit properly into my study in Germany. So if courses I'm interested in would be offered, I would definately make the same choice.

Stefan Rehle