In this paper the experiences and lessons learned from an International Summer Engineering Program (ISEP 2009) Centred around a fuel cell course are presented. ISEP was run at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey with participation from The University of Texas-Austin (Texas) and The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). The program contained 21 METU, 7 Texas and 2 Penn State students from a range of engineering majors. The fuel cell class was designed to strengthen fuel cell, core engineering, and global competency skills through a series of increasingly complex computer projects and global competency assignments. Results from an extensive evaluation completed by the students at the end of the summer are presented. Relative to most other international engineering programs or a typical engineering class, the biggest value-added educational component of the program is seen as the intensive formal and informal interaction achieved between the METU and US students. Copyright (C) 2010, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.