News Source & Photography: Office of International Affairs

Editor: News Agency of BIT

Translator: News Agency of BIT, Wang Wanqing

On the morning of April 29th, the 3th China-Canada-Africa international forum on higher education, namely “The Internationalization of Higher Education at Home: From Scientific Research Cooperation to Culture Exchange”, was held online. More than forty experts, scholars and representatives of teachers and students from four universities, including Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), University of Lagos in Nigeria, University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and University of Waterloo in Canada attended the meeting.

Wang Bo, vice president of BIT, attended the meeting and delivered an opening speech. He said that since the China-Canada-Africa international forum on higher education was held in Beijing in 2018 for the first time, it has become an important platform for BIT to conduct educational and academic seminars with universities in Canada and Africa. Under the circumstances that COVID-19 has brought severe challenges to the internationalization of global higher education, BIT adhered to the development concept of “Internationalization at Home”, expanded new ways of international exchanges and cooperation, and created good opportunities for school to cultivate talents and support scientific research. At the same time, he expressed gratitude to the three universities for their long-term support for BIT’s international exchange and cooperation, and wished the conference a complete success.

In the keynote speech part, professor Ogundipe Oluwatoyin, president of the University of Lagos, took the office of international relations, partnerships and development of the University of Lagos as an example to share the working philosophy of “Internationalization at Home” of the University of Lagos; Dr. Baljit Singh, vice president of scientific research at the University of Saskatchewan, introduced in detail the main achievements of the University of Saskatchewan’s international education, and scientific research progress in water treatment, food safety, vaccine development, etc. He also expressed that University of Saskatchewan attached great importance to the partnership established with BIT, which was based on the co-establishment of a Confucius Institute; Ian Rowlands, assistant vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo, explained six internationalization-related concepts and three key themes with the topic of "University International Relations in the Post-epidemic Era", and took the University of Waterloo as an example to report on measures to increase the university's influence.

The three parallel sub-forums after the keynote forum were respectively the "Medical-Industrial Integration and Scientific Anti-epidemic" sub-forum organized by Institute of Engineering Medicine, the "Green and Intelligent Vehicle Systems and Related Technologies" sub-forum organized by School of Mechanical Engineering, and the sub-forum of "International Education Measures in the Post-epidemic Era" organized by Office of International Affairs. The sub-forum invited Dr. Darcy Marciniuk, assistant vice-chancellor for scientific research of the University of Saskatchewan; professor Amir Khajepour, from the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo; professor Chimdi Maduagwu, the foreign dean of the Confucius Institute at the University of Lagos; director of International Relations at the University of Waterloo; and special advisor Suping ZHAO and many other participating experts and scholars to exchange views on scientific research progress in their respective research fields and international exchange cases.

Relevant BIT personnel from Office of International Affairs, School of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Engineering Medicine, School of Foreign Languages, and Office of International Students attended the meeting.