On December 28, 2019, a Forum on the promotion of Emerging Engineering Education (3E) was held at Tianjin University (TJU) to discuss the 2nd phased 3E research and project planning guidelines which aim to deepen 3E in terms of its content and coverage. The Excellence 9 also released the Declaration on the Quality of Emerging Engineering Education during the forum.
How to further deepen 3E? What are the main bottlenecks to break through? Wu Yan, Director of the Department of Higher Education at the Ministry of Education cast the questions and proposed that a 3E development theoretical system should be formed following the process of Practice, Summary and Promotion, and served as the “sound and strong formation” for 3E. He said that the reconstruction of a higher engineering education system should be closely connected with the reconstruction of science and technology, industry and social systems and actively motivate the interdisciplinary and professional integration among new engineering, new medicine, new agriculture and new liberal arts. “Thus a quality revolution in higher education is under way in the new era,” Wu added.
Several universities reported their practice of 3E since its debut in 2016. In January 2018, 612 projects were approved by the Ministry of Education to carry out 3E research and practice and some of them have achieved wide attention such as the Coherent-Collaborative-Interdisciplinary-Innovation (CCII) initiated by Tianjin University, the 3E F Plan of South China University of Technology and the Cheng Dian Program of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
Li Jiajun, the TJU Party Secretary said that under the guidance of 3E, TJU drafted a new plan for talent cultivation that advocates the concepts of “Five Excellences” and “Three involvements”. “By Five Excellences, we reinforce the moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and labor education in student cultivation and require that all the teachers and staff should get involved and play his or her role in student training; that the whole period of students’ college life should be directed; and that the education environment should extend from physical environment to virtual environment like cyberspace,” Li noted. He also remarked that as the leader of the National 3E Construction Group, Tianjin University would seek to establish a cooperative mechanism that would facilitate both the domestic and international experience exchange and promotion.
The forum then discussed the 2nd phased 3E research and project planning guidelines drafted by experts organized by the Ministry of Education. The guidelines contain eight parts like theory development, structural optimization, mode innovation, faculty building, entrepreneurship support, cooperative efforts in talent cultivation, and education quality improvement.
The Excellence 9 is a league formed by 9 universities which boasts of excellent engineering education in the nation including Harbin Institute of Technology, Tianjin University,Southeast University, Tongji University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Chongqing University, Dalian University of Technology, South China University of Technology and Northwestern Polytechnical University. It issued the Excellence 9’s Declaration on the Quality of Emerging Engineering Education during the forum.
According to the Declaration, the Excellence 9 will implement a Demonstrative Teaching Mode Promotion Plan that explores interdisciplinary personnel training mode and interdisciplinary teaching organization mode. Special courses about frontier topics that follow the latest developing trends in industry and technology will be designed, excellent 3E course resources will be co-developed and shared within the league and a new curriculum quality standard for all the league universities will be established. Moreover, the league vowed to build, run and share together several high level education practice platforms and bases for collaborative talent cultivation. The league hopes eventually to form a 3E quality standard system that is diversified and contains multi-level sub-standards of professional level, school level, university level, national level and international level.
By Eva Yin
Editor: Doris Harrington
