At the invitation of BASF's top management, on March 2nd and 3rd, Principal Gao Ju and three other leaders of SPA paid a visit to the BASF Pudong Base Greater China Headquarters and BASF Cao Jing Base. They were warmly welcomed by Dr. Morrison, BASF global senior vice president, Yan Peide, BASF global vice president, Dr. Xue Congjun, Cheng Min, director of BASF human resources, Shen Weilin, chief operating officer, Lu Qiang, human resources manager, Dr. Li Jian, from Asia Pacific Innovation Park.
Deepening School-Enterprise Cooperation by Optimizing Majors Befitting Industry
The two sides discussed how to truly implement the German Dual System, how to closely integrate the discipline construction with the industrial chain, how to coordinate production and education and the new models of cooperation in school-running. During the talk, Wang Zhengqi, director of Chemical Engineering Department of SPA, first introduced the new teaching plan under the model of BASF. Compared with the previous model, the new one pays more attention to the practice in enterprises.
Gao Ju emphasized that this arrangement can better reflect the concept of the German Dual System, giving students more time to learn about the equipment and facilities in the factory, production processes, safety production specifications and the knowledge, skills and professionalism required for their future positions. He sincerely invites enterprise experts to come to the training center of SPA to give students lessons. At the same time, he also hoped that teachers of SPA could go to work in the enterprise for half a year when the students have internship in enterprise to understand the new requirements of the enterprise and the gap between the training objective and the requirements for the production of front-line positions to revise the teaching plan, adjust and enrich the teaching content, and make the training objectives closer to the requirements of the enterprise to ensure the high quality of training and ultimately cultivating better employees for the enterprise.
Yan Peide said that BASF is very willing to make such a new attempt and the Human Resources Department of the company will further communicate with the factories to ensure the training time and they will work together with the school to develop typical tasks for each internship, so that students can learn what they really need. Lu Qiang spoke highly of the graduates of the first BASF Class of SPA. He said that they performed very well in the company and they are enthusiastic, positive, versatile and have a strong sense of collective honor.
Gao Ju emphasized that laying equal stress on pre-service education and on-the-job training is an important strategy for the development of SPA. School-running must be guided by the needs of enterprises and we must take advantage of major and faculty to expand new approaches and new methods of training. The Chemical Engineering Department of SPA has built a team of specialized teachers and they have set up small unit modules according to the job requirements of the chemical operator training system. Combining the skills of different types of jobs and positions, they have developed a variety of training models such as employee training, continuing education, academic education, and skill certificates. We look forward to providing more professional services for enterprises in future school-enterprise cooperation.
Xue Congjun highly praised the new exploration of the on-the-job training of SPA and he said that enterprises need such a modular training menu, for it facilitates the segmentation and trade-off of training breadth and depth, so that each factory can select different content according to the specific post and different levels of training purposes, and flexibly highlight the training focus. Shen Weilin gave a positive feedback on the first BASF staff summer training camp. He said that the training was unanimously praised by the employees and the directors of the factory.
After the seminar, Li Jian accompanied the guests to visit BASF Asia Pacific Innovation Park, which is BASF's largest R&D base in the Asia Pacific region and an important part of BASF's global R&D network. BASF has always used innovation as the cornerstone of the strategy of creating new chemistry. The workers are adhering to the belief that the composite material should be “1+1>2”. It is a combination of innovation and creativity. The green concept is always applied to the R&D and production. Gao Ju said that the Innovation Park provided a lot of inspiration for the school to build a beautiful and safe campus.
Former Minister of Education, Lu Xin pointed out that vocational education should change with the transformation of economic development model, change with the adjustment and upgrading of industry, change to meet enterprises’ needs of skill-based talents, and adapt to changes in markets. Therefore, the school should closely follow the development needs of enterprises, continue to promote the relationship with the enterprises, rely on each other and develop together. They need to promote the overall transformation and upgrading of the major groups with highly integrated school-enterprise cooperation, and ultimately promote the quality of school-running and cultivate more talents.