On January 13th and 14th 2021, SPEIT held a workshop on interim evaluation on Commission des Titres d‘Ingénieur (CIT) certification. As required by the CTI, SPEIT has been conducting an interim evaluation on a six-year certification that it obtained from the CTI in November 2018. The workshop was focused on the progress made in academic staff development, recruitment, admissions, and talent development (e.g. development plan optimization, postgraduate studies, and engineer internship), on what ideas and advice the academic staff and alumni could contribute in this respect, and on what SPEIT would look like and dedicate itself to in the remaining period of its CTI certification based on its fourteenth five-year plan.
The workshop was attended by the French Dean of SPEIT Mr. Frédéric TOUMAZET, the Chinese Dean Mr. LI Shaoyuan, Secretary of Party General Branch Mr. LIU Zenglu, Deputy Secretary of Party General Branch Ms. LI Yi, Vice Dean Mr. LU Jialiang, Assistants to the Dean Ms. ZHANG Lihui and Mr. Alain CHILLES, Subject Coordinators Mr. Thierry FINOT, Mr. Fredy TABOURIN, and Mr. WEI Guanghua, as well as some teachers and administrators. Alumni representatives Mr. GAO Ruijin and Mr. WANG Jiadong delivered their presentations as alumni representatives at the workshop which was facilitated by Mr. LU.
Mr. TOUMAZET elaborated on the CTI interim evaluation report, which summarized what SPEIT had achieved since obtaining the CTI certification such as steady growth of admissions with over 100 students admitted in 2020, gave a growing team of academic staff credit for bringing vitality into SPEIT, and noted the strong competitiveness of SPEIT graduates who had received acclaim from the companies they worked for. He also laid out a few suggestions for the development of SPEIT, such as encouraging joint programmes with the business community, setting up the China-France Scientific Centre, and promoting activities of scientific research innovation.
Mr. GAO Ruijin, the alumni representative who had been admitted to SPEIT in 2012, shared his thoughts about engineer education from the perspective of the intelligent connected vehicle industry. In his speech, he talked about the advantages of SPEIT students and the room for improvement, and proposed valuable recommendations on SPEIT’s instructional model, such as adding hands-on courses and improving students‘ engineering ability and interest in learning.
Mr. WANG Jiadong, another alumni representative who had been admitted to SPEIT in 2013, gave a presentation on offering SPEIT students a diverse range of opportunities for their career development. He recalled multiple opportunities in field of study, internship and career development provided to the students during his 6.5-year-long study in SPEIT, which enabled students to explore what they were interested in while receiving education in a way that didn’t excessively constrain their development.
Mr. LU talked about SPEIT‘s online instruction as an approach to COVID-19 and the way of applying information technologies to instructional reforms. The evolution of education, as he put it, highlighted a world of constant changes and the need to change education, which explained why SPEIT had shifted to online learning since the outbreak of the pandemic which saw the same effectiveness as in-person classroom instruction. He also shared some of his new ideas about the instructional model for SPEIT going forward based on the feedback of students and teachers.
Ms. ZHANG delivered a presentation on educating students by aligning instruction to industrial development. Based on the French engineer education, the feedback to instruction at the foundational phase of SPEIT, and the current status of school-business cooperation, she envisaged SEPIT’s approach to industry-instruction integration and appealed to academic staff to join the programmes integrating indsutrial and academic development.
Her presentation was followed by Mr. LI‘s introduction to SPEIT’s fourteenth five-year plan and recent considerations for SPEIT.
The workshop concluded with a discussion, where academic staff expressed their views about academic development by leveraging SPEIT‘s comparative advantages and a string of key issues in regards to development plan reform and school-business cooperation. They all felt proud of what SPEIT had achieved in the past three years and had confidence in its development going forward.