On the afternoon of April 17th, Professor Shearer West, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham (UoN) and delegates visited Beijing and held talks with Xie Hui, Party Committee Secretary of BJUT.
Secretary Xie introduced BJUT’s advantages and achievements in civil engineering, environmental engineering and other fields, and emphasized BJUT’s progress under the “Double First Class” plan. Secretary Xie expressed hope that the two universities could further cooperation in talent training, faculty exchange and scientific research.
Vice Chancellor West introduced Nottingham’s featured disciplines and international research cooperation and reflected on the similarity of academic disciplines and courses between the two universities, which in itself is conducive for further cooperation.
Invited by Secretary Xie, on the morning of April 18th, Professor Chris Rudd OBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Provost at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) visited BJUT, with a focus on BJUT’s international cooperation and experience in Sino-foreign cooperative university. Vice President Wu Bin met with Professor Rudd on behalf of BJUT. Directors of BJUT’s International Office, Beijing-Dublin International College and the College of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Electronics Technology also attended the meeting.
Firstly, Vice President Wu extended a warm welcome to Pro-Vice-Chancellor Chris Rudd and introduced BJUT’s conditions, experience in running Chinese-foreign colleges and cooperation with Nottingham. He mentioned that opening up, attracting talents and highlighting characteristics were BJUT’s three paramount strategies. BJUT sought to improve its strength and international reputation via extensive and productive international exchanges, in order to build a “world-famous high-level research university with distinct characteristics”. BJUT was happy to collaborate with world-class universities such as UoN in both practical and general terms.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor Rudd appreciated Vice President Wu’s hospitality, and gave a general account of UNNC, with an emphasis on measures for improvement in teaching staff and research. He pointed out in particular that after over ten years’ development, teaching quality at UNNC has markedly improved to the point that, UNNC students are demonstrating higher academic performances than those of the UK campus. Professor Rudd hoped to exchange with BJUT on Sino-foreign cooperative education in the future, and upgrade the areas of cooperation between BJUT and UoN.
After the meeting, Provost Rudd visited the Beijing-Dublin International College at BJUT accompanied by the respective leadership, and held in-depth talks on school administration, academic disciplines and programs, faculty, graduate destinations, etc.
Before the meeting, the College of Life Science and Bio-engineering at BJUT and the Faculty of Engineering at UoN reached intent on cooperation within joint master’s and doctoral program, undergraduate-postgraduate pathway and research as part of the preparation of cooperation agreements.
Founded in 1881, The University of Nottingham is a world-renowned first tier research university in the City of Nottingham, England, United Kingdom. Consistently ranked amongst the world’s top 100 universities, UoN was ranked 84th in the 2018 QS World University Rankings. The university is a member of the Russell Group, the UK-China University Consortium on Engineering Education and Research and the Sutton Trust 13, and a founding member of Universitas 21 and M5 Universities. UoN has five faculties, namely Arts, Engineering, Medicine and Health Sciences, Science and Social Sciences, providing over 50 courses in humanities and natural sciences. At present, it has over 45,000 students. The University of Nottingham Ningbo China was founded in 2004 and is the first Sino-foreign joint-venture university approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education and an overseas campus of Nottingham UK.
