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With globalization, the demand for competent engineering graduates with international acumen increases. In order to respond to this rising demand, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the International Research Experiences in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (IRECCEE) program to understand the impact of international research experiences on students through a multidisciplinary lens. The program provides Ph.D. students in civil engineering disciplines the opportunity to gain valuable international research experience and establish long-lasting collaborations with international researchers. The program funds students to travel and perform research work at an international research institution. For every student, such research experience becomes the intervention. This paper discusses the program and the corresponding research framework with the aim that the research community can leverage such framework. The mixed-method research framework was designed to comprehensively capture the immediate and sustained impact of the program on the students’ competencies. With a multidisciplinary approach, the framework captures impacts on students’ intercultural competence, professional development, intellectual growth, personal development, and academic development. The data collection includes survey designs and interviews. In order to capture immediate and sustained impacts, data is collected before and multiple times after the intervention. 

As a result of the ongoing globalization, international student experiences are becoming fundamental to advance students’ development and knowledge. Even though such growing importance, the body of knowledge regarding international interventions is dominated by subjective accounts and lacks contrasted results. In order to design an international research experience for graduate students, recommendations on the design and content of such experiences based on the review of literature were explored. A qualitative and bibliographical analysis of 40 studies evaluating the influence of international student interventions informed about the variables that such interventions should measure and the impact of such experiences on student development. Researchers especially measured the competencies intercultural development (83%), intellectual growth (58%), personal development (58%), professional development (50%), and academic development (15%). However, most of the studies failed to develop an appropriate research design that enables researchers to capture the breadth and depth of an international intervention. Results include addressing various competencies that students can gain during their experience abroad, using mixed methods to collect the data, whereby data should be collected at different time points including before, and multiple times after the international experience by different means. 

Globalization has led to increased demand for international education and education experiences by domestic students. However, the current body of knowledge regarding these experiences is scarce and mostly dominated by subjective accounts. This paper explores the research content and methods necessary to capture the impact of an abroad education and research experience. This ongoing study combines bibliometric analysis, literature review, and qualitative analysis of selected articles. Based on the body of knowledge in social sciences, student competencies impacted by an international academic intervention incorporate the following knowledge domains: (1) intercultural competence; (2) professional development; (3) intellectual growth; (4) academic development; and (5) personal development. A comprehensive review of existing approaches for assessing international student experiences was also contrasted against accepted research procedures. While a mixed-methods approach to collect data via survey instruments and face-to-face interviews can enhance the depth and breadth of the observations, collecting data at different points in time enables the capture of both immediate and sustained impacts on the student. Besides self-reported data, the evaluation of the students’ research advisors and peers should also be conducted.