Situated at the hometown of Premier Zhou Enlai, Huaiyin Institute of Technology is a local undergraduate university. Over the years, the school has always adhered to the training of first-class students, strengthened talent training, aiming at the needs of regional economic and social leading industries, and trained batches of applied talents urgently needed in regional economic and social development. The employment rate has always maintained above 96%, and the admission rate of postgraduate entrance above 20% for 5 years on end.
Adhering to the integration of disciplines and specialties. The school continues to improve the national-provincial-school brand specialty construction connection mechanism, having comprehensively carried out the “2612 Brand Specialty Construction” project and built 2 domestic well-known specialties, 6 leading specialties among the same kind in the province, 12 university-level brand specialties, and constantly improves the overall level of specialty construction. At present, the school has formed a multidisciplinary and coordinated specialty structure specializing in engineering discipline. After years of development, HYIT’s specialty construction has accomplished remarkable achievements. It has been approved 6 national first-class undergraduate specialty construction points, 8 provincial first-class undergraduate specialty construction points, and nearly 20 university-level brand specialty construction points and characteristic specialty construction points. In the latest 2021 China First-class specialty ranking of the Alumni Association (applied), HYIT ranked 8th in the China Polytechnic First-class specialty ranking (applied) with a score of one 7 stars and eleven 6 stars.
Conducting solidly engineering education accreditation. As an internationally accepted engineering education quality guarantee system, Engineering education accreditation is an important index to measure the construction level of engineering specialties in colleges and universities. In recent years, the school has been attaching great importance to the specialty construction and talent training work, in order to further strengthen the specialty connotation construction by promoting engineering education accreditation, playing the leading role of specialty accredited, penetrating the core “student-centered, achievement-orientated, and continuous improvement” concept throughout the whole process of talent training, in the hope of improving the quality of talent training. According to the idea of “reverse design, and forward construction”, it has formulated graduation requirements according to the training objectives; it has optimized the curriculum system for local characteristic industries, and effectively guaranteed the specialty construction quality and talent training quality through the teaching quality monitoring and continuous improvement mechanism. At present, six specialties such as Chemical Engineering and Technology, Mechanical Design, Manufacturing and Automation, Computer Science and Technology, Food Science and Engineering, Communication Engineering, and Bioengineering have passed the International Engineering Education Accreditation, and the number of passes ranks first in the universities of the same kind in the province.
Deepening the construction of first-class courses. Curriculum is the core element of talent training, and course quality determines the quality of talent training. According to the implementation plan of the Ministry of Education on the construction of first-class undergraduate courses, HYIT responded positively and accelerated the construction of the school’s online curriculum resources with new ideas and new methods. Relying on iCourse, FANYA, Credit Bank Online, Treenity and other domestic well-known online course platforms, it has constructed more than 20 large-scale online open courses for both social learners and students in school and more than 1000 small-scale online open courses (SPOC), covering the specialized core courses, specialized basic courses, public basic courses, innovative practice courses, etc. More than 40 online general courses have been introduced on platforms such as Chaoxingerya and Treenity, and the number of students taking these courses reaches more than 30,000 courses every year. After long-term construction, the school has been approved 37 national first-class undergraduate courses, provincial online open courses, and provincial online open courses to help rural revitalization.
Developing vigorously education of innovation and entrepreneurship. According to the “platform-based, project-led, integration of specialty and innovation, entrepreneurship education, collaborative development, open and shared development and sustainable development” principle, it has accumulated the overall force with a clear function positioning and its own characteristics, amassing and integrating resources, exploiting resource advantages, building a “one-core, two-district, many-spot, and multi-element” comprehensive innovation and entrepreneurship practice platform, forming a “one-center, multi-flowering, three-dimensional, and comprehensively-developing” situation. It has integrated innovation and entrepreneurship with talent training, building a hierarchical and progressive mass innovation curriculum system, offering 2.5-credit innovation and entrepreneurship compulsory courses for all the students; it has converted students’ innovation projects, papers published , patents authorized, competition awards, self-entrepreneurship, etc. into innovation and entrepreneurship credits, requiring no less than 4 credits. The innovation and entrepreneurship activities of the extracurricular activities have also been included in the undergraduate talent training system to constantly improve students’ practical innovation ability, offering more than 100 characteristic courses of innovation and entrepreneurship every year. It attaches importance to the leading role of competition and training, with competition guiding training, with training promoting learning, and has formed a four-dimensional linkage system of learning, training, competition and innovation. It has implemented the “Double-hundred Project” of the College Students’ Innovation & Entrepreneurship Training Plan and the “one specialty one competition, one faculty one brand” project of discipline competition, realizing the seamless connection of “College Students’ Innovation & Entrepreneurship” project, discipline competition, graduation design, incubation and conversion. In view of the specialty characteristics, the requirements of society and the individualized needs of students, it has built new cross-faculty and interdisciplinary integrative training mechanism, relying on School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (School of Cross-strait Entrepreneurship), and has established Xiangyu competition experimental classes, Xiangyu entrepreneurship pioneer classes, GYB/SYB training classes, and has organized Innovation & Entrepreneurship practice activities like Xiangyu Lecture Hall, Taichuang Lecture Hall, with the number of participants exceeding more than 5000 people a year. At present, it has expanded the full coverage of all specialties in innovation & entrepreneurship education, and won more than 8,000 prizes in and above the provincial discipline competitions, such as the gold prize in China College Students’ Entrepreneurship Competition, the bronze prize in China College Students’ ‘Internet Plus’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, the bronze prize in “Challenge Cup” National Competition of Undergraduate Extracurricular Science and Technology Works and the first prize in Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The school has been approved as “Cross-strait Youth Employment Entrepreneurship Demonstration Site”, “Jiagnsu College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Base”, “Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Practice Education Center”, has become one of the first pilot universities of Project “One Hundred Cities, One Thousand Schools”of “The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Alliance Education of China”, the vice chairman unit of “National College Student Alliance for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Practice”, and the chairman unit of “Jiangsu and Taiwan Alliance for Youth Innovation & Entrepreneurship Education”.
