Many international students struggle to adjust to a learning environment where they are encouraged to undertake predominately self-guided research with some mediated consultation with their supervisor. Traversing this 'learning culture' abyss can take some students up to six months before they are ready to tackle the challenges of their projects. In an attempt to understand newly enrolled international masters students' perception of engineering management practice and research, this paper reports on five (5) in-depth interviews. These interviews were conducted in the first few weeks of the students' program commencement and they were requested to comment on their previous study and industry experience, perceptions of engineering management practice (EMP) and perceptions of engineering management research (EMR). The outcome of this first stage of a larger study was the categorisation of students' baseline level of understanding of engineering management practice and research utilising a SOLO taxonomy.