Reflections on the Development of Engineering Education in China

Lin Zhongqin

President, Shanghai Jiaotong University

      Engineering plays a pivotal role in China, but we still see some shortages in cultivating sentiment, literacy, and vision of students. The engineering education in the future should be firmly grounded on the basic education and liberal education and we must make efforts to make sure an inclusive engineering education can produce talents with great sentiment, literacy and vision. To that end, Shanghai Jiaotong University has made five concrete practices: strengthening value guidance, promoting teacher multi-evaluation system, promoting wide-caliber education for engineering platform, building student innovation center, and integrating practical projects of some pilot enterprises into curriculum design.

Challenges for Engineering Education: Evolution or Disruption?

Gerhard Müller

Vice President, Technical University of Munich

      The individualized needs of teaching can be realized by the following aspects. First, driven by new topics related to each discipline, such as big data. Second, the establishment of comprehensive research centers, driven by interdisciplinary choice, requires crossing traditional disciplines and breaking the boundaries of teachers. Thirdly, the establishment of talent-driven research projects. In the course of curriculum setting, the definition of terminology should be discussed and agreed upon. In the process of ability development, first of all, we should define what kind of abilities do students need. Secondly, we need to study how to integrate some models into the process of curriculum design and optimize them. At the same time, the learning ability module of each project is established.

Reform and Innovation

Philosophy, Practice and Reflections on Engineering Education

Xu Huibin

President, Beihang University

      Today's knowledge explosion and scientific and technical revolution have impelled our universities to keep up with the times and social development, to teach our students the way of thinking, to stimulate innovative thinking and to enhance their ability of practice. These new ideas and models are very important for engineering education. Beihang University has successively established the Advanced Engineering College, the China-France Engineering College, the International General Engineering College and the Beihang College in a bid to promote engineering education reform and implement student-centered measures to guide students to discover, enrich and surpass themselves. The university is committed to exploring the way of reforming engineering education so as to adapt to the future development of industry and technology.

Global Base for Knowledge Collaboration Toward Innovation Campus

Naoto Sekimura

Vice President, University of Tokyo

      In order to contribute to the development of the future society, Tokyo University attaches great importance to the industry-university collaboration. At the same time, we encourage interdisciplinary cooperation between different departments and colleges, as well as joint training of students with industry cooperation. Tokyo University has established a world-leading education system and strategic partnerships with some of the world's top universities. Tokyo University's "Building a Global Campus Model" is part of its global top university plan, which has three pillars: first, to establish and improve a new and effective education system through comprehensive education reform; second, to improve Tokyo University by establishing strategic partnerships with some of the world's leading universities. The third is to establish a core platform for promoting global campus planning and implementation.

The Challenge and Strategy of Engineering Education

Zhou Yu

President, Harbin Institute of Technology

      Today's engineering education faces the challenges mainly brought by three aspects: the development requirements of the times, the development of science and technology and an innovation-driven society. The engineering education reform is driven by development of the times, the connotation of engineering education is uplifted by science and technology advancement, and the essential feature of engineering education features innovation and practice ability cultivation. Therefore, top engineering education must adapt to the development of the times calls to set up foresighted expectations; top engineering education should closely integrate with scientific and technological progress, resonance with the pulse of science and engineering, integrate scientific research and education; innovation and practice ability cultivation remain the key objective of the top engineering education, which must advance in the light of the development of the times and the progress of science and technology.

New Objectives of Engineering Education from Education and Industry 1.0 to 4.0

Hocheng Hong

President, National Tsing Hua University

      Today's industry and education 4.0 could offer valuable references to engineering education. With the advent of the new era of artificial intelligence, engineering education should downplay the education of knowledge or ability that may be replaced by artificial intelligence in the future. Instead, engineering should add value to other disciplines. Future engineers should not only master multi-disciplinary knowledge, but also need to apply and combine this knowledge with the aid of tools. This should be the objective of future engineering education. What's more, future engineers need to care about major social issues, which requires engineering education incorporate more liberal arts and general education, so that students can better choose their value orientation. The “Value-added Engineering” project carried out by Tsinghua University achieved good results.