Creating a cradle of innovation

Graduates from Shanghai Jiao Tong University are known for their spirit of innovation. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Internationalization of advanced education is not only a necessary process for global economic integration, but also a requirement for China to cultivate talent for future development.

Zhang Jie, president of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, says SJTU was one of the earliest Chinese universities to develop an internationalization strategy, and it has completed a series of bold moves over the past few years to create a multicultural campus atmosphere and develop talents with a global outlook.

"Shanghai Jiao Tong University is committed to cultivating top-level competitive professionals who have a global perspective and deep understanding of the multicultural workplace. In this regard, we have long been working to promote our international development," says Zhang Weimin, director of its international cooperation and exchange department.

The university has established several joint institutes through cooperation with top international higher education institutions over the past decades.

The China Europe International Business School, co-founded with the European Foundation for Management Development in 1994, has become China's leading business school.

The University of Michigan UM-SJTU Joint Institute has also been widely acclaimed for its success over the past 10 years, and in 2014 received an Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education, the first time an award of this caliber had been given to a Chinese university.

Other successful joint institutes include the SJTU-ParisTech Elite Institute of Technology, established in 2012, and the University of Southern California USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, established in 2014.

Meanwhile, to develop international practices and establish benchmarks, almost every school or department at SJTU has developed long-term partnerships with overseas institutes that are leaders in their fields.

"But we don't simply reproduce or copy overseas education methods and experiences," Zhang Weimin says. "What we do is absorb international advanced teaching methods and concepts, while paying close attention to the appropriate features of China's higher education and its national conditions."

"We've created an education model that has absorbed the essence of East and West, which helps cultivate the talent needed to meet the needs of China's economic development," Zhang Wei-min says.

Meanwhile, the university has a multicultural environment thanks to the large number of international students and foreign faculty members. The university receives more than 5,000 international students every year, and it has also attracted about 200 full-time foreign faculty. In recent years, SJTU has offered many courses in English that have proved popular.

Since 2007, 450 world-class professors and top-tier faculty of international standing have joined the university, and more than 250 existing faculty have transferred to its tenure-track system.

As an important move in its development, SJTU implemented a university-wide incentive system to motivate faculty and students in 2007, aiming to develop a high-quality faculty comparable to that of the best Western universities by 2020.

"Establishing a high-quality faculty has been the key to building a world-class research institution," says Zhang Jie. "Over the past decade, we have created a culture of innovation and boosted research capacity through reforms to the career paths for existing and new faculty members."

Zhang points out that reforms at SJTU have promoted a shift in educational emphasis. "We are moving away from knowledge transfer to knowledge creation," he says.

Gao Weiqiang, dean of the School of Biomedical Engineering, says, "Shanghai Jiao Tong University has made a lot of innovative efforts to promote scientific research, such as innovative academic development paths, cross-disciplinary studies, a green channel for the recruitment of talent and various support policies."

Countries such as the United States have a long tradition of encouraging innovation with a series of favorable measures, says Anders Lindquist, chair professor of automation at SJTU and a new foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

However, China has developed fast over the years, and higher education institutes such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University have been catching up with world leading universities, he said.

As the first Chinese college to join the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) project in Singapore, SJTU has actively engaged in international research collaboration. Its teachers and students are also working with counterparts at the National University of Singapore on a flagship program of CREATE, Energy and Environmental Sustainability Solutions for Megacities, which is exploring the feasibility and implementation of initiatives for the sustainable development of the cities.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also funding a project led by teachers at SJTU that is conducting clinical trials for a combination drug for tuberculosis and HIV. It has made an important step toward a substantially faster and more effective treatment for tuberculosis.

Through such projects and partnerships with other universities and research institutes around the world, SJTU is positioning itself to become a cradle of innovation and hopes to play a key role in transforming China into an innovation power.