Dalian University of Technology bolsters Sino-Japanese friendship

Dalian University of Technology in Northeast China's Liaoning province, which has made great strides in developing Sino-Japanese cooperative education programs, vows to give full play to its advantages to cultivate more talent with a good understanding of both countries and carry forward the friendship between China and Japan.

DUT, located in Dalian city, one of the hubs for Japanese enterprises, started to offer courses with intensive Japanese training in engineering programs in 1987. It has established cooperation links with more than 50 Japanese universities over the last 35 years.

So far, nearly 1,400 undergraduate students study their majors in Japanese in DUT every day. About 38.9 percent of the faculty with overseas degrees at DUT are graduates from Japanese universities. More than 3,000 alumni of DUT are working in Japan.

It joined hands with Ritsumeikan University to establish the International School of Information Science& Engineering, or ISE, in 2013. The school was the first of its kind in the higher education sector to be jointly run by Chinese and Japanese university in China.

Strengthening relationship

Over the last five years, DUT has launched several programs with the aim of elaborating on historic details of exchanges between DUT and its Japanese partners, summarizing experiences and drawing up a blueprint for the future.

By strengthening friendship, trust and cooperation, DUT hopes it could contribute to the cultivation of talent who can expand the friendship between China and Japan from generation to generation.

Guo Dongming, president of DUT and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, proposed the Schoolfellow Friendship Initiative in 2017 to call on Chinese and Japanese universities to work together to create more chances for students to study overseas, increase the number of exchange students and enhance the understanding of different cultures.

In April 2019, the university hosted the DUT Sino-Japanese Student Exchange Program to promote student exchanges in technology, engineering and culture.

During the eight-day event, a total of 373 teachers and students from 27 leading Japanese universities, including the University of Tokyo and Osaka University, participated in an array of activities organized by School of Mechanical Engineering, School of Material Science and Engineering, Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, School of Architecture and Art, School of Foreign Languages and ISE. By inviting them to visit labs, take part in competitions and join seminars, DUT presented a full picture of what can be learned and experienced. The university surveyed the participants and found that about 40 percent of the Japanese students submitting valid questionnaires were interested in taking on long-term education programs in the university. About half of that 40 percent hoped to focus on engineering studies or research.

In November, DUT and Tokyo Institute of Technology hosted an online ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary of their cooperation, debuting a program to celebrate the anniversaries of partnerships between DUT and Japanese universities.

So far, DUT has organized more than 10 events including the 25th anniversary with Osaka University, the 35th anniversary with Kyushu University and the 25th anniversary with Tohoku University.

Activities such as seminars, students forums, cultural exchange programs and online visits to labs attracted much attention and played a vital role in promoting cooperation and communication in fields such as machinery development, new materials, software and civil engineering between universities from China and Japan.

More than 4,000 representatives from governments, universities, enterprises and organizations in China and Japan attended the events online and offline, according to DUT.

A model collaboration

Among the vast number of Sino-Japanese cooperative education programs, ISE is known for its innovative teaching model and quality.

Proposed in 2009 by Luo Zhongxuan, vice-president of DUT, and established in 2013, ISE has become a cradle for talent in software engineering and digital media technology.

All major courses at ISE are bilingual classes taught in Japanese or English. At ISE, professors are from leading domestic and international universities and enterprises with strong market positions that will ensure students have a good understanding of new knowledge and real market demand.

It encourages freshmen and sophomores to take on courses in other faculties within DUT to expand their horizons. It also offers junior and senior education programs, which are jointly set up with universities such as Waseda University and Ritsumeikan University and companies like Sony, to help them plan their career path.

In 2022, it debuted a new program, approved by the China Scholarship Council, with Waseda University and Osaka University to train more talent for innovation. The school won the second prize of the National Education Achievement Award issued by the Ministry of Education in 2018.

In recent years, ISE has been attaching great importance to serving the healthcare sector. It has established an innovation team with a strong capacity in artificial intelligence and digitalization to support smart healthcare system development.

It has established one national and two provincial education platforms and five research and development centers to support cultivation of international talent. Over the last three years, students at ISE won 63 prizes for innovation and entrepreneurship.

More than 50 papers were published by undergraduate students of ISE. At the 2022 Mathematical Contest in Modeling, You Hao from ISE won the Outstanding Winner award. More than 70 percent of ISE students chose to take postgraduate study in China or overseas after they graduated. Most of them went to Japan.