Education Research Frontier June 2014, Volume 4, Issue 2, PP.24-29
Thoughts on the Cultivation Countermeasures of Senior Engineering Talents Yu Yang1, 2, 3, #, Xiaolan Song1, XiQing Wu1, Yongbin Yang1, Tao Jiang1 1. School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University 2. Key Laboratory of Biometallurgy, Ministry of Education 3. Centre of Biometallurgical Engineering, 932 South Lushan Road, Changsha, Hunan, China, 410083 #Email: csuyangyu@csu.edu.cn
Abstract The current domestic and international higher education development tendency strengthens the innovation of senior engineering talents training. How to choose the senior engineering talents training modes and the countermeasures are currently the problems of our country’s higher education which should be solved quickly. Combining the fact involved mineral processing of Central South University senior engineering talents test class, the present situation and problems of senior engineering training in our country were analyzed, which would provide certain theory basis for the senior engineering talents training. Keywords: Engineering; Talents; Cultivation; Countermeasures
1 INTRODUCTION On February 21, 2006, the CPC Central Committee General Secretary, Hu Jintao emphasized the concept that the talents resource was the first resource, which was in his speech of the central political bureau the twenty-ninth times collective study. From 25 to 26 on May 2010, national talents work conference was convened, Hu Jintao pointed out that talents resource was the first resource, talents problem would be the key related to party and national enterprise development, talents training was in a quite important position in the whole Party and country's work. On June 14, 2012, the Ministry of Education, appointing that the demand for talents should adapt to the economic social development; setting the talents training system reform as the core, promoting the national education system reform and perfecting the modern education system, issued the National Education Development in Twelfth Five Year Plan. Overview of current world form, the talents were important driving force for the progress of social civilization and people to be rich and happy, which would make our country thriving and prosperous. The fierce international competition was the competition of talents in the final. It should be our country's priority among priorities for the development of the education to increase the personnel development and create favourable talents environment. In order to meet the national demand for high-quality talents, the talents cultivation model has been preceded by Central South University, since 2009. The beginning of creating new senior engineering talents in the test class, which not only filled the blank of higher education Elite Education in Central South University in some of aspects, but also provided powerful talents and technical services for the process of our country new-style industrialization, and also provided the future outstanding talents for large and medium-sized enterprise. The reform and innovation is not only the source of the development for socialism, but also the essential way and the powerful motive force of the scientific development of education. Few years practice of the senior engineering test class teaching, not only reflected the advantages of the Elite Education system of Central South University, but also made the training workers obtain the recognition and praise from many education experts. However, staying in the world with the integration environment of internationalization, industrialization, and informatization was still a huge challenge for our country about how to cultivate a large number of leading talents of higher education with the professional knowledge of industry, professional skills and information technology. From the summary of three years of teaching practice, the current problems of senior engineering talents training models of the test class still - 24 www.erfrontier.org
existed. In addition, parts of the teaching mode and the system still need to be improved. How to highlight the characteristics of practice, renew the talent training model, optimize the talents training mechanism, improve the quality of personnel training, and walk out of an engineering talents training way of development of science and technology has become the vital problem which should be paid attention to for the higher education staff.
2 SENIOR ENGINEERING TALENTS AND TRAINING ADVANTAGES 2.1 Senior Engineering Talents and Innovative Senior Engineering Talents in Central South University The CPC Central Committee, the State Council issued the June 6, 2010 National Long-term Talent Development Plan Outline (2010-2020 years) which pointed out, the talent is someone who has certain professional knowledge or skill and carries out creative work and contributes to the society. Senior engineering talents are trained for the reason of large population in our country, relatively backward of our economic development situation, while combining with domestic and international situation of higher education and from the angle of sustainable development of personnel training in colleges and universities, and such a concept of training was put forward [1]. In a word, the senior engineering talents were focused on the engineering practice with high professional skills, strong operational and technical abilities. Innovation of senior engineering talents training is the key to Central South University senior engineering talent training as well as our country’s higher education. General Secretary Hu Jintao in seventeen big reports put forward clearly that improving the capability of independent innovation and building an innovation-oriented country was the core of our national development strategy and the key to enhance the comprehensive national strength. Innovation of senior engineering talents training can be understood as generalized senior engineering talents, the social needs progress, a nation waits for development, which both require our talents training mode always adhere to innovation development train of thought. It is to cultivate a number of talents who have high, refined and sharp technology, someone have the courage to bear the historical responsibility, have the ability of being good at finding and solving the actual problems, specializing in a particular field or fields and make contributions in professionals. Central South University senior engineering talents test training was managed by the specialized institute director, set up by the academicians, senior professors and enterprise a gleam of experts. Also, Senior Engineering Talents Teaching Guidance Committee was established to ensure the smooth implementation of training process. The school cultivated the students' pioneering consciousness through project support, achievement of science and technology incubator venue construction and encouraged the creation of small enterprises, and improve students’ creative ability, which will not only broaden the coverage of the senior engineering talents, but also cultivate a large number of talents for the country to satisfy the needs of undertaking the transfer of industries, the introduction of advanced technology needs, and digestion and absorption of advanced technology, independent innovation, and promote the scientific development of school and regional economic and social development [2].
2.2 Cultivation Advantages of Senior Engineering Talent Test Class 1) Higher Engineering Practice Ability Senior engineering talents test class will be implemented six years as a whole training. Based on cultivating features of engineering test class, the engineering practice teaching was strengthened. In order to guarantee the students understand and grasp engineering technology from practice easier, most of the professional courses will be taught in enterprise engineering field. This teaching mode provides students wider thinking platform, so that they can find problems and solve the problems through their own observations. Course teaching and examination were also in combination with the engineering practice, professional courses were always involved in case teaching. Courses were set such as enterprise and engineering management, enterprise regulations, enterprise culture, domestic and foreign marketing, which will give full play to the students' subjective initiative, and make the enterprise and engineering practice connected realistically. At the same time, in order to culture students' project practice ability, school generally set some characteristic credits for test class, the contents always contain scientific research trainings, academic lectures, innovation education plan trainings, professional skill appraisals, enterprise trainings and - 25 www.erfrontier.org
solutions of enterprise problems. The series of steps make engineering test class students cultivate their engineering practice ability from all respects, which would truly means walking the scientific development road with the combination of theory and practice. 2) Higher Attention from Enterprises Obviously, the enterprises need senior talents with higher engineering practice ability. Most of the professional courses of senior engineering talents test class would be taught in enterprise fields, students’ six years training were closely connected to enterprise and engineering. Also, students were asked to take engineering practice at least one year, which means students have more than one-year’s work experience in enterprise, so this talent training mode made the students have unique advantages than common students. In addition, students’ cultivation of Central South University senior engineering talents test class implemented double tutor system, school hired related enterprise supervisors to guide students except the teachers in school, which would make the relationship of students and enterprise more closely. And as the students learning professional knowledge, they may accept the enterprise culture, improve enterprise ownership, and establish deeper ties with enterprises at the same time. When the students had to graduate, the enterprise had an in-depth understanding to engineering test class students, which would be thoroughly beneficial to enterprise admission talents. At the same time, the engineering test class students could enter the relevant enterprise preferentially, and once they enter the enterprise, room that is more considerable will spring up after long-term post practice. Therefore, the enterprise will take high attention to the innovative engineering talents. 3) Senior Talents- the Needs of the Society The key to scientific and technological progress and innovation are talents, especially the innovative senior engineering and technical talents. Society aspires for progress, which a large number of senior talents. The experiences of developed countries need to demonstrate that a large number of practical and specialized engineering talents were the direct impetus of the industrialization process. Nowadays, under the combination environment of internationalization, industrialization and informatization, if our country need to promote the new type of industrialization process, which not only need academic talents who can do research but practical professionals who can engaged in the operation, and more importantly, we need a large number of technology and management leading talents who face to industry and hold the professional knowledge, professional skills, information technology and management ability together. Senior engineering talents are the outcome of the combination of personnel training and enterprise training, they not only have solid specialized knowledge but also have high engineering practice ability, and who are precisely scarce talents the society needed at present. Therefore, senior engineering personnel cultivations are to satisfy the needs of the society itself in essence.
3 SENIOR ENGINEERING TALENTS CULTIVATION STATUSES-TAKING THE CULTIVATION OF MINERAL PROCESSING ENGINEERING TALENTS TEST CLASS OF CENTRAL SOUTH UNIVERSITY AS AN EXAMPLE 3.1 Introduction of Senior Engineering Talent Training Mode Central South University senior project minerals processing engineering talents test class mainly to cultivate students who have solid physical chemistry and chemical engineering knowledge, and grasps the basic principles and methods of mineral processing and mineral resources comprehensive utilization, holding wider knowledge and high quality and have strong ability to adapt to the social needs, and also the students who can be engaged in mineral processing, mineral resources and the second comprehensive utilization of resources, sinter ball group and direct reduction, chemical engineering, environment engineering and computer application in the fields of the production, design, teaching, scientific research, technical development and economic management of the advanced engineering and technical personnel were the objectives to be cultivated. Engineering talents test class adopts the universityenterprise cooperation cultivation mechanism for "4+1+1,” which consists of "four years of university undergraduate course education, one year practice in enterprise and also one year study of the master engineering.” The first four years is the undergraduate training phase, the fifth year stands for engineering practice stage, and the sixth year should be the master engineering cultivating stages. From the undergraduate stage, students have a third of study - 26 www.erfrontier.org
time in enterprise. They have to finish the experience of post-practice more than one year, which is the same to working in the titular position in the domestic large and medium-sized, and students have to accept the engineering practice and training in production workshop. In addition, students' graduate design must be combined with the practical production. Students also can graduate with the graduate design instead of graduation thesis in some condition. Students' courses selection also reflected the distinctive independent. According to the needs of test class students, school opened professional courses and elective course. Students' classroom teaching are managed by all teachers who have a senior professional title, part of a courses taught by business people, foreign teachers' teaching occupy more than 30% of all courses. Students choose course credits independently, which emphasizes the combination of classroom teaching and engineering practice, natural science and social science, engineering and economic management, from which we could strengthen the innovation practice teaching and improve students' comprehensive qualities. The courses emphasize the teaching methods of heuristic, case teaching and independent study. Students' learning methods were stressed, inspiring students' creativity. To make sure engineering teaching effect, and to cultivate talents who dropped into enterprise, have the ability to solve problems and have adequate stamina to promote enterprise development and serviced for large and mediumsized backbone enterprises, the school had formed school-enterprise talents training complex depending on companies and public institution. In addition to hire enterprise experts for teaching, school implement the Double Teacher System during practice teaching and graduation design stages and the enterprise tutor undertake to the student one-on-one instruction. At present the mineral processing project engineering talent test class already had sign cooperative agreement with a number of enterprises, building the joint training bases of the innovative senior engineering talents, holding the higher engineering education symposium, establishing research group that led by the main leaders of university and strengthening the engineering education theory and practice research, which would truly provided effective theory and practice guidance for the new talents training reform.
3.2. Problems Analysis and Countermeasures of Senior Engineering Talents Cultivation 1) The Education Difficulty of Practical Skills Senior engineering talents cultivation reflects the "Engineering Education" in character. However, schools cannot have a special and standard industrial engineering study and training facilities for students. This requires cooperation’s between schools and enterprises, while the difficult exists to reach an agreement because they have different business purposes, especially when the company cannot able to clearly understand the capability of senior engineering talent class graduates, companies are generally not willing to establish cooperative relations with universities on talents cultivation, so that the students' practical skills training seems to be impossible. Therefore, it is essential for universities to choose reliable enterprise for win-win cooperation. Setting targeted subjects for talents cultivation is needed for universities, as much as possible to enable students to meet the requirement of Target Company’s operating skills base. Meanwhile, in order to ensure the students' skills training and good employment prospects for students, different practical skills learning units could be arranged at different times and different companies. This allows for greater space for learning and training advantage for talents cultivation [3]. 2) Specificity and Superiority is Not Clear The survey found that many of the senior engineering talents do not know the reason of why they are better than students in regular classes are. Sometimes they do not know how much of their future employment advantages. In fact, the superiority and the particularity of senior engineering talent classes must allow students insight into, so that students can go to learn more purposefully. Meanwhile, clear objectives also arrange for students accepted to the school curriculum at the same time, he is to capture the relevant expertise to achieve the knowledge replenish. If students do not know their own strengths, then the student's initiative will not get full play, which is the largest senior engineering personnel training omission. So, for this situation, the university should be set up specialized courses or teachers for students to analyze the situation and set their learning goals, which greatly aroused the enthusiasm of students, so that the students' subjective initiative could get full playing, making the training more successful with less practice. - 27 www.erfrontier.org
3.3. Other Reasonable Proposals for Senior Engineering Talents Cultivation—Analysis of the Advices from Qiu Guanzhou Academician in the Speech at the Symposium with the Students from the Test Class In 2010 June, the Ministry of Education had established the "Excellence Engineer Education Training Program" (referred to as the "Excellence"). It is to carry out the major reform project of "national medium and long-term educational reform and development program (2010-2020 year)" and "national medium and long-term talent development plan (2010-2020)", which is also a great measure for our country in senior engineering talents cultivation. Chinese Academy of engineering, former vice president of Central South University Qiu Guanzhou, who had been worked as technician, workshop director and director in Guangdong Baoshan mine for many years. The enterprise management and business philosophy and educational experience made Qiu academician have a more profound understanding of senior engineering talent cultivation in Colleges and universities. At the students’ symposium of Qiu academician and mineral processing engineering senior engineering talents test class, Qiu academician pointed out three views on the "Excellence Engineer" training, and the viewpoints were analyzed as below. 1) The Excellent Platform was the Key Qiu academician pointed out that excellent training platform was the primary condition of Excellence Engineer training. Therefore, a talent program platform not simply refers to the teaching facilities, but also includes perfect education system and teaching mode. The platform also needs to be constantly built and perfect ceaselessly, from which the adverse factors will be eliminated in the minimal state. Create a personalized environment teaching training colleges and universities was one important starting point. The free development of personality is one of the important characteristics for the cultivation of senior engineering talents, as well as senior talent development foundation. In order to realize the personalized education, many universities in our country had been reformed in the certain aspects of teaching, establishing and improving the credit system and the flexible educational system. 2) Excellent Teachers were Necessary Qiu academician also presented that the teacher was the guide of the student on the way of training. Therefore, it was truly necessary to own the excellent teachers for cultivating excellence engineers. Actually, the teacher not only bears the teaching responsibility, but also a more important mission of educating students, guiding them to know such moral boundary as right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, kind or evil and so on. Such a senior intellectual with an ideological and psychological quality not up to the standard would be a horrible factor for our society. To avoid these phenomena occur, the mainly method we used was teaching, teachers should find the students’ problems from the drip, clearing the mind and psychological barriers of the students, making the students learn scientific and cultural knowledge much better. From the perspective of school, teacher’s selection system for the senior engineering training should be more perfect, focusing on the teachers' psychological quality, academic level, teaching ability, students' evaluation and other aspects to consider hiring or not [4]. 3) Excellent Students was Needed Qiu academician emphasized those excellent engineers from the perfect students. In the excellent platform and a strong teaching condition, students' hard work of excellence has become one of the most important conditions. Taking the mineral processing engineering senior engineering talents test class as an example, mineral processing engineering disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology and information as a whole, whether the students could understand and master more knowledge is not only a teacher teaching problems in the classroom under limited time, but it would be more affected by the students' own factors. This point had come up with some requirements for universities in selecting talents students. These requirements should consider various aspects, such as the physical, mental, psychological factors and so on, which also should be taken into consideration, as mentioned above, it was more important for students to study with a proper assessment method, which is the problem of how to make these seedlings bigger and stronger after strict selection [5].
4 CONCLUSIONS Senior engineering talent training is not only the content for the twenty-first Century college education, but also the - 28 www.erfrontier.org
important part of our country talent cultivation system. From 2006 to 2012, many documents and the National Education Development in Twelfth Five Year Plan had emphasized the importance of the talents training of our country. The training of senior engineering talents should be found from the problem proceeding, solving problems from three aspects of schools, teachers and students. Selecting senior engineering talents training mode and countermeasures were also requested from the teaching base with innovative teaching ideas and concepts, giving students a free space for development. In addition, we also need to pay attention to practice teaching, give full play to students' subjective initiative, which would play a vital role in our senior engineering talents training [6].
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The present research was carried out under the Program of New Century Excellent Talents in Ministry of Education of China (NCET-07-0869).
REFERENCES [1]
Xiangling Han, Yilun Liu, Junjie Wang, Chenxing Ouyang and Heping Huang. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2010, 5:122-126.
[2]
Liangqing Wang, Qinqin Mei, Ye Liang. Science & Technology Information, 2011, 3: 193-194.
[3]
Congli Yao, Baoping Ren.China University Teaching. 2008, 9:91-94.
[4]
Bing Han, Zhangzhong Wang, Shengxiang Huang, Zusheng Hang and Bo Kou. Guangdong Chemistry, 2011, 2(38):188-189.
[5]
Bo Xu. MODERN ENTERPRISE CULTURE, 2009, 32: 186-187.
[6]
Siying Wang, Ming Lǚ, Jianping Cheng. J.Taiyuan University of Technology (Social Science Edition, 2002, 20 (4): 51-53.
AUTHORS Yu Yang, born August 18, 1972 in Liling, Hunan province, China. His education background was listed as follows: 1990/09–1994/06, Bachelor of Biochemistry, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China. 1994/09–1997/06, Master of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Hunan Medical University, Changsha, China. 997/09–2000/06, Doctor of Molecular Biology, Xiangya Medical College of South Central University, Changsha, China. His major field of study is biohydrometallurgy, coal desulfurization and so on. His military and work experience as follows: 1997/07-1999/09, Hunan Medical University, School of Basic Medical Molecular Biology Research Center, Internships researcher; 1999/10-2001/12, Central South University (formerly Hunan Medical University), Basic Medical Molecular Biology Research Center, Research Assistant; 2002/01-2002/08, Central South University, College of Resources Processing and Bioengineering, Department of Bioengineering, Research Assistant; 2002/09-2007/10, Central South University, College of Resources Processing and Bioengineering, Department of Bioengineering, Associate professor (2007 Selected for New Century Talent); 2007/11-2010/02, Indiana University, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, visiting scholars; 2010/03- Now, Central South University, College of Resources Processing and Bioengineering, Department of Bioengineering, Associate professor. In September 2011, publication of Proceedings of IBS2011 named Biohydrometallurgy: Biotech Key to Unlock Mineral Resources Value was written by him as the 5th author (Changsha, China). He had previous researched about coal biodesulfurization, bioleaching and so on, now he is still working on them. Dr. Yang had taken part in the Hunan Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, making a great contribution and receiving many awards there. - 29 www.erfrontier.org