Harbin Institute of Technology

Reported by: YAN Mingxing

Translated by: WEI Hongjia, DENG Ke

Edited by: Jennifer Taylor

Updated by: 2012/9/28

September 1st, the third Sino-EU Workshop on Engineering Education was hosted by HIT in the Harbin Huarong Hotel. During the conference, agreement was reached on future collaborations on China-Europe engineering education and participants signed the Harbin Roadmap.

The opening ceremony was presided over by HIT Vice President REN Nanqi, who is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Chinese Ministry of Education Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges Deputy Director-General XU Yongji, Department of Higher Education Deputy Director-General LIU Ju, Department of Postgraduate Education and Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee Deputy Director-General SUN Yegang, and China Scholarship Council Deputy Secretary-General YANG Xinyu, attended the opening ceremony, as well as representatives from the Sino-Europe Engineering Education Platform (SEEEP) and universities participating in the workshop.

HIT Vice President ZHOU Yu welcomed the participants. He introduced HIT and its achievements and said that SEEEP has gained tremendous support from Chinese and European governments since it was founded three years ago. Collaborations in Sino-EU engineering education occur across many different fields, at many different levels and take many different forms. SEEEP has become an indispensible aspect of Sino-Europe cultural and educational exchanges, an area for the universities within the platform to collaborate in, and facilitator of the implementation of cooperation models in significant fields of Sino-EU engineering and education. He believed that great outcomes would be achieved from this workshop and Sino-EU collaborations would be broadened.

CLUSTER Representative, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) President Eberhard Umbach gave his thanks for HIT’s great preparation for the conference. He said that SEEEP deepened collaborations between Chinese and European universities. Both sides have worked hard to meet challenges in the fields of health, safety and climate change. Eberhard expressed his hope that measures could be actively undertaken to broaden collaboration fields and increase the number of exchange programs. The goal of Sino-EU engineering education is to cultivate talents, and the future of Sino-EU engineering education depends on the next generation. Therefore, collaborations in the areas of jointly fostering talents and scientific research need to be strengthened. He believed that SEEEP will yield substantial results in the future.

XU Yongji, Vice Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, MOE, in his speech at the opening ceremony, extended his sincere thanks to HIT for efforts made to prepare for this conference. He discussed cooperation and exchanges in education and culture between China and the EU. He believed that there is a solid foundation for engineering education cooperation between China and the EU, hoping that China’s colleges and universities and the CLUSTER will take the opportunity and use SEEEP to develop a sense of openness and bring vigor and vitality to their engineering education and both achieve benefits from their cooperation. XU also hoped both parties will train more engineering talents who have social responsibility, international vision and innovative capability so they can make new contributions to cultural and educational communication between China and Europe.

During the keynote speeches, KIT’s Jürgen Becker spoke on European Introduction to the CLUSTER and Challenges for Cooperation in Sino-EU Engineering Education; The CSC’s Deputy Secretary General YANG Yuxin spoke on Introduction to the CSC and Proposal on Sino-EU’s Cooperation; Vice Principal José Santos Victor, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisboa spoke on Graduate School and Joint PhD Training as well as Master’s Double Major Program. Deputy Director SUN Yegang, Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee, spoke on Achievements and Outlook on Sino-EU Engineering Education. Delegates at the conference discussed the Sino-EU Sustainable Engineering Graduate School and Double Major Programs.

The third Sino-EU Workshop on Engineering Education concluded with the signing of the Harbin Road Map and the closing ceremony hosted by Vice President DING Xuemei.

According to the Harbin Road Map, the 3rd Sino-EU Workshop on Engineering Education agreed the following:

1. To initiate the Sino-EU Sustainable Engineering Graduate School Program.

2. To initiate the Sino-EU Joint Training of Master’s Double Major Program.

3. To initiate the Sino-EU PhD Summer/Winter Research and Study Camp.

4. To continue to improve the training mode of collegial engineering and cooperation between universities and industry by strengthening students’ innovative and engineering practice abilities and advancing practical cooperation in training engineering talents.

5. To continue making the effort in various ways to share information. The Sino-EU Engineering Education Workshop has provided an important platform for exchanges and cooperation between the universities of SEEEP, a significant channel for study in development and cooperation methods, and implementation of the key areas of the plan.

6. China will set up Sino-EU Engineering Education Cooperation Scholarships using national, local and university scholarships in order to provide more support for the joint training of Sino-EU engineering talents. The CLUSTER will pool their resources and attempt to win more support from their governments and the EU Council so that they can make a greater contribution to Sino-EU cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation.

7. Both parties discussed and approved in principle the drafting, printing and distribution of Proposal for the Foundation of Sino-EU Sustainable Engineering Graduate School and Guidance on the Proposal for the Sino-EU Joint Training of Master’s Double Major Program which will be written and revised by both parties’ secretariats after consideration of the opinions and suggestions put forward at this conference.

8. The 4th Sino-EU Engineering Education Conference, 2013 will be hosted by University Karlsruhe in Germany and the 5th Sino-EU Engineering Education Conference, 2014 will be hosted by Xi’an Jiaotong University in China.

The first Sino-EU workshop on Engineering Educatioon was held in Shanghai in 2010. 12 Cluster Universities (Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research) and 18 Chinese Leading Technical Universities attended the workshop. The topics discussed included the role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Engineering Education. The two main outcomes of the workshop were the Memorandum of Understanding between CLUSTER and the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and the establishment of SEEEP. Currently SEEEP consists of 18 Chinese universities and 12 European universities. It aims to promote substantial collaborations between Institutions of Higher Education in Engineering in both China and Europe in the fields of talent development, teacher training, development of teaching materials and scientific research programs. The second Sino-EU Workshop on Engineering Education was held in Lisbon in 2011. The topics discussed included Innovation, Intellectual Property, Sustainability in Engineering Education, Double Diplomas and Student Mobility, and Schools of Joint Doctorates in scientific fields of excellence in Chinese Universities and Schools of CLUSTER.