The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) held a seminar of Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) at Beihang University from October 16th to 18th. It was sponsored by the School of General Engineering, with Dr. Bindiganavalel Ramakrishna, Director of NAE GCSP Network, serving as the host.
Over 30 experts and scholars, as well as tens of students from the University of Toronto, New York University, Beihang University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Jiaotong University and so on, attended the seminar.
On October 16th, Dr. Ramakrishna reported on GCSP for the participants. Designed to meet the 14 “Grand Challenges” announced by NAE, the program aims to cultivate excellent engineers equipped with five competencies—research creativity, multidisciplinarity, entrepreneurship, multicultural literacy and social consciousness by reforming training models of engineering talents. More than 50 colleges and universities have participated in the program.
On the following day, October 17th, Dr. Ramakrishna hosted a seminar for teachers, including an introduction of GCSP cases, a simulation of its teaching framework and a heated discussion about topics like curriculum design, program implementation, multidisciplinary research, innovative design, entrepreneurship programs and global horizon.
Prof. Haijun Huang, Vice President of Beihang University, also attended and addressed the seminar on that day. He pointed out the consistency of objectives between GCSP and Beihang. According to him, the introduction of GCSP to Beihang could help develop entrepreneurship awareness, professional abilities and solution-oriented thinking in top innovative talents, internationalize engineering education and facilitate the exchanges and cooperation with high-level universities in the field of engineering talent cultivation.
On October 18th, the experts of the seminar visited some teaching laboratories. They inspected the lab and offered precious advice on approaches to improving teaching conditions of basic experiments and ways of using labs, according to the requirements of GCSP implementation and the curriculum of the School of General Engineering.
Besides, Prof. Guangcun Shan from the School of Instrumentation Science and Opto-electronics Engineering was recommended to be in charge of GCSP in Beihang University. He discussed the details involved in GCSP implementation with Dr. Ramakrishna and relevant experts and teachers from Beihang.
The seminar ended in the afternoon. It provides theoretical support and practical reference for Beihang’s internationalization of engineering education and talent cultivation, and lays a solid foundation for the university selected for the “Double First-Class” initiative to meet the goals set by the national plan.
Reported by Qiudi Zhao
Edited by Qing Wang
Translated by Mingzhu Li
