Construction and Evaluation of Talent Training Mode of Engineering Specialty Based on Excellence Engineer Program

Abstract

Engineering talent training quality is important for the development of engineering education in China, and the excellence engineer program is an important measure for talent training, and the reform of engineering specialty can be also carried out depending on it; therefore, the construction and evaluation of talent training mode of engineering specialty based on excellent engineer program are studied in this research. First, relevant studies in engineering education are analyzed. Second, the engineering education status in China is discussed. Third, the main problems of engineering education in China are analyzed according to the questionnaire interview data. And the reform measures of the engineering talent training mode for a process equipment and control engineering specialty in a university are analyzed. And then the talent training reform evaluation of this process equipment and control engineering specialty is carried out based on a novel hierarchical analysis method, the evaluation index system is established by questionnaire survey, and optimal membership degree is obtained, which shows the superiority of the excellent engineer program. Finally, several countermeasures and suggestions are put forward to promote the smooth implementation of excellent engineer program.

Keywords

talent training mode engineering specialty excellence engineer program

Introduction

Excellent engineer education training program is proposed by China’s Ministry of Education, which is also known as “excellence engineer program.” The excellence engineer program can establish the human resource advantage of building an innovating country and realizing the industrialization and modernization. To promote the smooth implementation of the excellence engineer plan, it is a matter of the utmost urgency to mobilize the powers of all stakeholders concluding enterprises, industries, and universities. The excellence engineer program is an important approach of training practical talents, which aims to change the talent training mode of engineering education and create a new talent training mechanism through school–enterprise cooperation. Excellence engineer program is one of the methods to promote the quality of engineering education in China, which can form a novel talent education process with stable teaching contents, curriculum system, management system, and evaluation method based on modern educational theory.

Under the background of globalization, the development level of engineering science and technology can reflect the core competitiveness of a country. At present, improving the ability of independent innovation and building an innovative country have been listed as the heart of Chinese development strategy. The realization of these strategic objectives will be the key to improve the comprehensive national strength of China, which can be supported by excellent engineer program. The excellence engineer program is carried out based on the practical project and engineering technology, which aims to improve engineering ability of students. In the execution of the excellence engineer program, colleges and enterprises should enhance collaboration to promote engineering education reform. The engineering talents of adapting to the industrial development can be cultivated in active participation of enterprises. The top-ranking engineering technicians with creative spirits and practical abilities can be provided for China.

The engineering education reform has achieved great progress abroad; the United States has put forward the “regression plan” of engineering education; the students’ ability in practice is improved by enhancing the cooperation between schools and enterprises. Engineering education in German pays attention to linking theory with practice, focuses on the student’s independent work ability, and strengthens cooperation between schools and enterprises by combining teaching and scientific research closely. Japan, South Korea, India, and other countries address the combination of science and technology and emphasize on improving the innovative engineering and technical personnel. Although engineering education modes in various countries have different features, they have one thing in common: They all strengthen the engineer’s comprehensive quality and train students to lead the development of engineering technology at home and abroad; excellent experiences of foreign engineering education reform can provide information for reform of higher engineering education in China (Zhu, 2014). In recent years, although the implementation measures and plans of excellence engineer program have been constantly improved, there still exist some problems needed to be further investigated.

Literature Review

Excellence engineer program is an important innovation reform for higher education in China, which has been concerned by some researchers in recent years, and some excellent achievements have been obtained. Li et al. (2015) constructed the practical teaching evaluation system under excellence program’s visual threshold, which could play an important role in understanding the implement of the excellent program, and the results could offer effective guidance for implementing a higher educational reform. Hisham Alidrisi (2015) proposed an approach to prioritize SOs (Students’ Outcomes) to establish a meticulous study plan based on the ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling), and a case study was carried out; results showed that students should have teamwork awareness. H. Von Blottnitz et al. (2015) reported on a curriculum reform process in chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town; results showed that more than 95% of students rated their knowledge of environment and sustainability issues as excellent, and 80% of students confirmed this in the final examination, and the feasibility of reforming core undergraduate engineering curricula was demonstrated. Chowdhury (2015) studied the learning styles of engineering students, teaching models of engineering academic staff, and role of smart technologies for the implementation of project-based learning in engineering education at the United Arab Emirates University. And the improvement of project-based learning through understanding learning and teaching styles was discussed. Joly et al. (2015) strengthened the operation research for the oil industry and described the implementation of a pioneer, corporate-wide strategic learning program on operation research techniques at a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy company. And the learners obtained the theoretical knowledge and practical skills, and the program can enable the planners and schedulers to rethink inefficient work processes and develop further specializations. Z. L. Shu et al. (2017) studied the education and training measures for excellent engineers of technical engineering and analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of main engineer education and training methods. Michael G. Eastman et al. (2017) studied the efforts of a prominent technical university to attract and retain urban high school graduates. F. Bernelli-Zazzera et al. (2017) studied the value of peer evaluation for the improvement of quality of the aerospace higher education across Europe, The proposed system implied a site visit from a group of peers to crosscheck and verify the data and documents prepared for the degree course under evaluation. Aileen Y. Huang-Saad et al. (2018) explored entrepreneurship education assessment by documenting the current state of the research and identifying the theories, variables, and research designs used by the broader community. Annina Takala et al. (2019) studied the current status and development of sustainable in Finnish engineering education and suggested that engineers needed to be offered with mental tools to deal with uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Chandra Mouli Vemury et al. (2018) presented pedagogical methods developed and implemented to deliver sustainable design education to undergraduate students on civil engineering programmers at Newcastle University and constructed teaching and assessment model. Yoonsun Bae and Sungkwon Woo (2019) studied the developments of construction engineering education in cyber universities through examination of course curriculum, course system, course plan, and course management of construction engineering. Annette Rasmussen and Bob Lingard (2018) studied the education policy reforms to raise educational standards and identified intellectual elites and made special provisions for them.

As seen from the current achievements, the engineering education has been improved based on the novel talent training program, and the good effect has been obtained for students; therefore, it is significant to construct the talent training mode of engineering specialty based on excellence engineer program.

Materials

Since 1978, China’s higher engineering education has developed rapidly and gained many achievements. China is in the stage of all-round industrialization and demands a lot of applied talents in engineering and technology. Since 1999, with a large scale of the enrollment of the university, the number of the students is getting more and more in college. In 2018, the college had 38.33 million people; about 34% of them are the engineering students. At present, there are 2,663 ordinary colleges and universities in China, and about 94% of them are engineering colleges and universities. There are about 15,000 engineering specialties in ordinary colleges and universities. China has become world engineering education country.

In recent years, the education in China has changed significantly. The professional education has got more and more attentions. The government not only develops the higher education, but also attaches great importance to the development of vocational education to train a lot of professional and technical talents. At present, the vocational education contains all kinds of education plans and programs implemented by government, and higher vocational education has been restored and developed. In 2018, the higher vocational colleges recruited 368.83 million students, and more than 50% of them are major in engineering specialties.

With the expansion of the education scale, education investment is also growing accordingly. Based on related statistical results, in 2018 the China’s GDP (gross domestic product) was 90.03 trillion dollars, and the educational investment occupies about 4.11% of GDP. The investment in higher education also increases. The campus constructions of colleges and universities are significantly strengthened, the educational facilities are obviously increased, and many universities have covered thousands of acres. The campus area is not less than some famous universities in developed countries. Although teaching and test facilities are still insufficient, the quality of them is better and better, many facilities have reached the international level, and the material basis of engineering education has been greatly strengthened.

With development of science, technology, and economic construction, China’s colleges and universities have gradually set up some cross-subject specialties, such as molecular biology and functional material, resources recycling, internet of things engineering, and biomedical engineering. There are many engineering majors among them, such as environmental science and engineering, information, new material, new energy, aerospace, marine engineering, nanotechnology and engineering, energy chemical engineering, water acoustic engineering, and smart grid engineering. Some traditional specialties also add new contents, such as coal clean utilization, extreme manufacturing, process automatic control and information, which cultivate a large number of urgently needed talents.

Under the background of large-scale engineering construction in China, the education authorities, traditional teaching mode of some colleges and universities, especially some universities in the region with higher economic development level, cannot meet the requirement of industrial upgrading and transformation of development mode; the reform should be carried out. New teaching mode emphasizes the value orientation of demand decision and student body, attaches importance to comprehensive engineering training, and pays attention to the curriculum system reform under the guidance of the practice.

The excellence engineer program concludes five tasks: a new talent training pattern based on school–enterprise should be created, a talent training mode of engineering education should be proposed, the high-level engineering education teaching team should be constructed, opening to the outside world of engineering education should be expanded, and the standards of excellent engineer education training plan should be identified. Since the excellence engineer program is implemented, about 200 universities and 3 million students have involved in it; these universities have built nearly 1,000 engineering practice education centers with help of different enterprises; tens of thousands of part-time teachers from more than 6,000 companies participate in the process of cultivating engineering talents. The excellence engineer program is well under way due to efforts and supports of government, universities, enterprises, and society, which has promoted the reform of higher education greatly. Some universities also carry out a series of fruitful reforms that conclude CDIO (conceive, design, implement, and operate) and PBL (problem-based learning/project based on learning). Although these two modes come from abroad, there are many innovations in process of localization. All reforms are concerned and supported by authorities of government.

In recent years, higher engineering education in China has developed rapidly, and the society has put forward higher requirements for the quality of higher engineering education. In addition, with development of economic globalization, the internationalization trend of higher engineering education is more and more obvious; therefore, the establishment of the quality monitoring and assurance system of engineering education reaches a broad consensus in education and industry.

In early 2006, China gradually established and perfected higher engineering education accreditation system that had a substantially equivalent with international certification system, and actively joined in international mutual recognition agreement. Engineering education accreditation in China adopted the international concept and standard based on achievements, and focused on communication ability, cooperation ability, professional knowledge and skills, lifelong learning ability, and the sound world outlook and responsible sense of graduate students, which greatly affected the reform of engineering education system. At present, China has carried out engineering education accreditation on more than 370 professional points, which can provide an important guarantee for the quality improvement of engineering personnel training in China, and it is also an important foundation of China’s higher engineering education participating in international competition. At the same time, it has laid a good foundation for the future convergence with the system of engineers.

Interview

To find out the existing problems of engineering education system in China, some stakeholders concluding students, teachers, governments, and industrial enterprises are selected to undertake interview.

Questionnaire Outline

Based on literature review and analysis, the engineering practice is the trend of international higher engineering education reform currently, and the purpose of questionnaire is to find out existing problems of higher engineering education. And four problems need to be solved in this research: How does the engineering talent training mode of engineering specialty return to engineering practice? What is the requirement of the current engineering practice for the ability of engineering graduates? What problems does engineering education reform face? What are the difficulties in carrying out excellence engineer program? These problems are the main contents of questionnaire, which can form the analytical frame of this research.

Questionnaire Object

Thirty-two engineering education stakeholders are selected as interview objects, which conclude 10 industrial corporate employers, six engineering specialty graduates, eight engineering specialty professors, five engineering education experts, and three engineering education certification experts. The questionnaire objects come from Liaoning province, Hebei province, Shanghai city, Xi’an province. The scene and email questionnaires are also carried out.

Material Treatment

The records, notes, and messages collected through questionnaire are converted to written texts by transcribing and arranging, and then the combination, simplification, and induction are carried out for these texts; the relationship between analysis materials and researching problems is confirmed to explain the ideas of the questionnaires (Chowdhury, 2015).

Analysis Results

According to the analysis results of interview, the engineering education mode in China has the following problems restricting the implementation of excellence engineer program:

Problem 1: Some undergraduate courses are not quite consistent with the engineering practice, and many courses are too theoretical and impractical. Specialized courses are set up widely; however, the teaching hours of professional courses and engineering practice are inadequate. Some teaching materials are separated from practice; although students grasp a large number of knowledge, they cannot deal with practical engineering problems. Knowledge learning of students is disconnected from engineering, and the specialty course lags far behind the practice frontier (Alidrisi, 2015; Atchley, 2015).

Problem 2: In very long a period of time, many people mistakenly think that “technology” is only the application of “science,” or “engineering” is simple application of “science.” Misconceptions about “engineering” cause dislocation phenomenon of easily applying the training mode of “technical personnel” and “scientific talent.” Training mode of “scientific personnel” excessively emphasizes knowledge and ability cultivation. Training mode of “technical personnel” generally focuses on technology application ability and ignores the practical innovation ability. Engineering education develops the education and teaching based on “technical knowledge” instead of “engineering” and losses its inherent characteristics.

Problem 3: Because the engineers possess profound professional knowledge and skills that others cannot grasp, a contract is formed between engineering and society. On one hand, engineers consider high-degree self-discipline as a kind of profession; on the other hand, society also requires engineers with a higher conduct standard (Cu et al., 2015).

With continuous evolution of self-role and responsibility of engineering talents, engineering ethics have become increasingly outstanding and gradually becomes a new subject. All professional organizations in America, France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, and other industrial developed countries have also developed a professional ethics. The development of engineering ethics presents new challenges to engineering education. Engineering education cannot rest on knowledge teaching and skills training and should also train engineering talents with good professional spirit and professional sense of responsibility (Grigoryev & Stepochkina, 2014). Comparing with the international engineering ethics education, China’s engineering ethics education begins relatively late. Subject construction, professional researching institution assignment, professional researching team building, curriculum and teaching system construction, and other aspects should be improved further. There is still a large gap between home and abroad in engineering ethics education level, and the engineering ethics education generates the vacancy phenomenon in a certain extent; therefore, the engineering talents in China lack awareness of engineering ethics, it is necessary to carry out the engineering practice in China quickly.

Analysis

To put forward an effective talent training mode of engineering education, the process equipment and control engineering specialty in a university is used as researching object to carry out empirical study. It has many years of development, which is one of earliest undergraduate specialties in this university. The process equipment and control engineering specialty is the key and brand characteristic specialty. For a long time, the process equipment and control engineering specialty carries out teaching and research on developing, designing, manufacturing, inspecting, and safe managing petrochemical equipment actively carries out the teaching reform and has formed the distinctive petrochemical equipment characteristics.

After decades of accumulation and inheritance, process equipment, and control engineering specialty has established a teaching team with high teaching level, strong scientific research ability, and high education level. At present, the teaching team concludes 24 teachers, which has proper age and professional title structure. The age structure of teaching team is listed in Table 1. The professional title structure of teaching team is listed in Table 2. The age and professional title structures reflect the comprehensive strength of process equipment and control engineering specialty.

Table 1.

Engineering Practical Ability Training Mode of Process Equipment and Control Engineering Specialty.

Course setting		Teaching resources	Teaching method	Implementing object
Basic professional cognitive courses	Professional and academic front, cognitive practice, social practice in summer and summer vacation, basic course experiment	Laboratory and scientific research achievements	Site visit, classroom instruction	Freshmen, Junior students
Professional engineering skills upgrading courses	Production practice, curriculum design, professional training, curriculum practice, professional research	Practice teaching base laboratory and training base	Field teaching, laboratory teaching	High-grade students
Professional comprehensive engineering ability training course	Graduation practice and design, comprehensive curriculum design and experiment	Enterprise comprehensive laboratory	Self-practice, laboratory teaching	High-grade students, graduate
Innovative engineering ability training part	Engineering science and technology competition, enterprise scholarship, innovative experiment, and design	Horizontal scientific research resources, discipline platform	Extracurricular instruction, group instruction	Group of students with strong cognition and thinking ability

After years of development, the process equipment and control engineering specialty has formed stable research directions with the petrochemical characteristics, which concludes safety assessment of petrochemical equipment, failure risk analysis and disaster prevention, status monitoring and fault diagnosis of mechanical equipment, vibration welding and process, rotating mechanical seal, heat exchanger theory and new type heat exchanger development and application, and so on. The process equipment and control engineering specialty has been listed in the second batch of excellence engineer program in China.

Evaluation Method

The talent training reform of process equipment and control engineering specialty based on excellence engineer program can be evaluated from the points of standard formulation, curriculum system and teaching form reform, teaching staff construction, and university enterprise joint training. Talent training reform of this specialty based on excellence engineer program can also be evaluated based on these evaluation indexes; the evaluation process not only grasps the basic connotation of excellence engineer and is carried out in an objective and fair attitude, but also encourages the process equipment and control engineering specialty to play an advantage, obtain the characteristics, and improve the training quality of excellence engineer (Battaglia & Kaya, 2015).

The talent training quality evaluation index system of process equipment and control engineering specialty based on excellence engineer program is constructed according to the actual situation of engineering education reform, which is listed in Table 1.

To improve the evaluation level of talent training quality of process equipment and control engineering specialty based on excellence engineer program, the intelligent algorithm is adopted. And the algorithm procedure is listed as follows:

Step 1: Index standardization

The standardization treatment is carried out for positive and negative evaluation indexes of talent training mode of engineering specialty, and the corresponding equations are listed as follows:

x_{i j}^{*} = \frac{\max {x_{i j}} - x_{i j}}{\max {x_{i j}} - \min {x_{i j}}} (i = 1, 2, \dots, n; j = 1, 2, \dots, m)

(1)

x_{i j}^{*} = \frac{x_{i j} - \min {x_{i j}}}{\max {x_{i j}} - \min {x_{i j}}} (i = 1, 2, \dots, n; j = 1, 2, \dots, m)

(2)

where $x_{i j}^{*}$ denotes normalized standard value of $x_{i j},$ $x_{i j}$ denotes the original value of evaluation index, $n$ denotes the number of first level index, and $m$ denotes the number of second-level index.

Step 2: Weight distribution and test

The original weight of different indices in every level is confirmed by the following expressions:

b_{i} = \sqrt[n]{\prod_{j = 1}^{n} x_{i j}^{*}} (i, j = 1, 2, \dots, n)

(3)

ω_{i} = \frac{b_{i}}{\sum_{i = 1}^{n} b_{i}}

(4)

where $b_{i}$ is the judgment matrix, $ω_{i}$ is the weight coefficient.

The consistency ratio $C R$ is calculated for random consistency test of judgment matrix $b_{i} .$

When $C R < 1,$ the results of single sort of indexes by the test meet consistency, and the final weight of indexes are obtained.

Step 3: Optimization of projection direction and determination of optimal scheme

The standardized weight $X_{i j}$ can be obtained by the following expression:

X_{i j} = ω_{i} x_{i j}

(5)

The linear projection index $Z_{i}$ projected on direction vector $a_{i} = (a_{1}, a_{2}, \dots, a_{n})$ by projection Eigenvalue $Z_{j}$ of sample $j$ in one-dimensional linear space is expressed by

Z_{i} = \sum_{j = 1}^{m} a_{i} X_{i j} (i = 1, 2, \dots, n)

(6)

When the index value is given, the projection objective function $Q_{(z)}$ changes with projection direction $a_{i} .$ The projection direction reflects data structure, the optimal projection direction can show characteristic structures of high dimensional data, and the optimal function of membership degree is listed as follows:

MAX Q_{(z)} = S_{(z)} D_{(z)}

(7)

S_{(z)} = \sqrt{\frac{\sum_{i = 1}^{n} {(Z_{j} - {\bar{Z}}_{j})}^{2}}{n - 1}}

(8)

D_{(z)} = \sum_{i = 1}^{n} \sum_{i = 1}^{n} (R - r_{i j}) f (R - r_{i j})

(9)

s . t . \sum_{i = 1}^{n} a_{i}^{2} = 1

(10)

where $R$ is the local density window width parameter, which is related to sample structure; $S_{(z)}$ denotes the class distance; $D_{(z)}$ denotes the class internal density; $f (R - r_{i j})$ denotes the unit hopping function; $r_{i j}$ denotes the distance between projection Eigenvalues, $r_{i j} = | Z_{i} - Z_{j} |,$ ${\bar{Z}}_{i}$ is the average value of $Z_{i} .$

Finally, the optimal membership degree is applied to evaluate the talent training mode of engineering specialty. The maximum value of every index is used as optimal value, and then the optimal value is used as best projection direction to be substituted to Expression 6; finally, the projection value of talent training model of engineering specialty is obtained.

Results

Talent training quality index system of process equipment and control engineering specialty based on excellence engineer program is listed in Table 2. Five levels are defined for evaluating the every index, which concludes “very poor,” “poor,” “normal,” “good,” and “every good,” and the scores range from 1 to 5. The questionnaires are issued to experts, teachers, students, and enterprise engineers of process equipment and control engineering, and the questionnaire quantities of experts, teachers, students, and enterprise engineers are 100, 150, 250, and 200, respectively, and the number of questionnaires retrieved is 100, 150, 247, and 199, respectively. And the scores of questionnaires retrieved can be used as original analysis data for confirming the weight of every index. The weight of every evaluation index can be calculated by the weight optimization model mentioned above, and the corresponding calculating results are shown in Table 3.

Table 2.

Talent Training Quality of Process Equipment and Control Engineering Specialty Based on Excellence Engineer Program.

First-level index	Second-level index
Standard formulation (I₁)	Meet talent training standard of process equipment and control engineering specialty (I₁₁)
	Obeys files of running orientation and advantages of process equipment and control engineering specialty (I₁₂)
	Serves the industry standard (I₁₃)
Curriculum system and teaching form reform (I₂)	Reaches training object of excellence engineer program (I₂₁)
	Improve practical ability and quality of process equipment and control engineering professional students (I₂₂)
	Apply advanced teaching method (I₂₃)
Teaching staff construction (I₃)	Carry out practice in factory (I₃₁)
	Proportion of enterprise teachers (I₃₂)
	Teaching and scientific research of teachers (I₃₃)
	Training and assessment of teachers (I₃₄)
University enterprise joint training (I₄)	Practice teaching condition of enterprise for process equipment and control engineering professional students (I₄₁)
	Training plan of enterprise (I₄₂)
	Corporation form between university and enterprise (I₄₃)
	Quality assurance system of teaching (I₄₄)
	Quality and quantity of practical bases (I₄₅)
	Corporation effect of production and research (I₄₆)
Engineering education facing to the world (I₅)	International teaching method (I₅₁)
	International perspective of students (I₅₂)
	International competitiveness of students (I₅₃)
Support by university (I₆)	Police and measures support (I₆₁)
	Funds safeguard (I₆₂)
	Inspiriting mechanism (I₆₃)

Table 3.

Optimal Weight of Evaluation Index.

First-level index	Weight value	Second-level index	Weight value
(I₁)	0.11	(I₁₁)	0.34
		(I₁₂)	0.36
		(I₁₃)	0.30
(I₂)	0.20	(I₂₁)	0.20
		(I₂₂)	0.48
		(I₂₃)	0.32
(I₃)	0.27	(I₃₁)	0.18
		(I₃₂)	0.25
		(I₃₃)	0.31
		(I₃₄)	0.26
(I₄)	0.14	(I₄₁)	0.09
		(I₄₂)	0.16
		(I₄₃)	0.22
		(I₄₄)	0.15
		(I₄₅)	0.21
		(I₄₆)	0.17
(I₅)	0.18	(I₅₁)	0.33
		(I₅₂)	0.40
		(I₅₃)	0.27
(I₆)	0.10	(I₆₁)	0.16
		(I₆₂)	0.48
		(I₆₃)	0.36

The optimal membership degrees for training effects of process equipment and control engineering specialty before and after the implementation of excellence engineer program are calculated, and the corresponding calculating results are listed in Table 4.

Table 4.

Whole Relationship Degree of Engineering Training Effects.

Period	Optimal membership degree
Before the implementation of excellence engineer program	0.943
After the implementation of excellence engineer program	1.203

As seen from Table 4, the whole relational degree of training effects for process equipment and control engineering specialty before the implementation of excellent engineer program is less than that after the implementation of excellence engineering program; therefore, the training effect of process equipment and control engineering specialty based on excellence engineering program is better, and the measurements used in this period are feasible. The students majoring in process equipment and control engineering can obtain better engineering training, and then they can improve their innovation abilities and engineering consciousnesses; therefore, the graduates have higher employment competition.

Discussions

The process equipment and control engineering specialty in a university can put forward effective measurements for promoting the development of excellence engineer program actively according to the analysis results obtained, and the effective measurements are listed as follows.

Reform of Practical Teaching System

Cultivating the practical ability of students majoring in process equipment and control engineering is an important task for excellence engineer program; therefore, the practical teaching system should be created for achieving this goal. The practical teaching system should meet the requirements of fostering practical abilities of students and serving enterprises, industries, and countries. The practical teaching system should optimize the course structure, regulate the practical teaching content and method, and improve the practical teaching program of “excellent class” for process equipment and control engineering specialty.

The proposed practical teaching system concludes three parts, namely, general education mode, professional elective mode, and practice mode. The general education mode demands that students possess an open mind. The professional elective mode meets the individual learning requirement of students, which can provide elective courses and relevant practices related to process equipment and control engineering for students. In addition, the professional elective mode should fully consider the technology requirement of cooperative enterprises of excellence engineer program and emphatically strengthen basic knowledge teaching and development of innovative and practical ability. The practice mode adds innovative practice phases such as innovation business starting-oriented program and scientific research training program (Cummings, 2014). The post-training, job-rotation practice, project training, and practice should be carried out for “excellent class” in the seventh and eighth semesters. The students in “excellent class” can work in the cooperative enterprise, and they can get post and salary from enterprise.

Case study 1: The process equipment management course mainly aims to develop the engineering conception of students and cultivate the outstanding ability of students, which concludes the new conception, new standard, and new method of process equipment management. This course emphasizes that students in “excellent class” should think about engineering problem using engineering thinking. Some case study courses are added to teaching system, which can provide the solid foundation for implementing the excellence engineer program. The new syllabus is revised according to requirements of equipment management post in petrochemical enterprise. The photo, video, and flash about process equipment management are used in the classroom; the scene of process equipment management is moved to class; the students can effectively grasp the new concepts and theories; and the teaching effect is obviously improved.

Building High-Quality Innovation Teaching Team

Teacher team is the key to improve the practical teaching level; optimizing teacher staff not only improves discipline coverage of practical teaching, but also ensures the smooth operation of proposed practical teaching system. The teachers with rich practical experience should be added to teaching team of “excellent class”; they can undertake course construction of “excellent class” and guide graduation design. The leading experts with rich practical experience of modern enterprise in the industry are invited to guide teaching practice and give regular instruction in specialized courses and experiment lessons. The invited experts can communicate with students on research frontiers of process equipment and control engineering to enhance engineering innovation ability of students of excellent class (Lemus-Zúñiga et al., 2015).

Introducing the Research Projects Into Practical Teaching System

The students majoring in process equipment and control engineering should learn the basic theory and professional knowledge of control engineering, mechanical engineering, and chemical engineering and grasp inspection and control methods of industrial production process. The training program and course plan of excellent class should be amended, and the contents of professional courses should be optimized. The research group of process equipment and control engineering can involve undergraduates in experiment, and then the students can grasp advanced testing techniques and understand the prospective experiment. The specialty experiment plan of excellent class of process equipment and control engineering can be revised through combining the classic experiment and project experiment, which stimulate academic interest and innovative consciousness of students. The novel experimental teaching model considering basic theory and scientific task is established (Abdulwahed & Nagy, 2014). The real ability of students majoring in process equipment and control engineering after graduation can be evaluated based on adaptability to new work environment and working efficiency of them.

Case 2: In recent years, I have taken charge of three scientific projects and directed several students in excellent class to participate in the scientific research. I also guide several students to apply for the innovative training projects. About 50 students obtain the deep practical opportunity and rich engineering knowledge; this engineering talent training mode effectively promotes the development of excellent engineer program.

Construct the Practice Base of Cultivating Excellent Engineer of Process Equipment and Control Engineering

The excellence engineer program should apply order-based talent cultivating mode; the colleges should work with closely with enterprises to construct the practice base of cultivating engineer of process equipment and control engineering. On one hand, the excellence engineer program should be job-oriented based on professional job requirements; on the other hand, the students majoring in process equipment and control engineering can participate in enterprise practice. The students in excellent class of process equipment and control engineering are important parts of equipment management personnel of petrochemical enterprises. The excellent engineer program should pay attention to the practicability and pertinence of talents training and meet the needs for urgent qualified personal of equipment management. The practice bases outside school should be used effectively, which are integrated into teaching plan. And then the innovation and practice ability can be fostered, and the professional knowledge structure of students in excellent class can be expanded (Bothe & Putnik, 2015).

Hardware Construction of Excellence Engineer Program for Process Equipment and Control Engineering Specialty

Laboratory construction should be performed based on experimental teaching of professional courses, the designing comprehensive experiments should be strengthened through combining the professional direction, and then the bases of experimental teaching, scientific, and technological innovation and personnel training can be provided for process equipment and control engineering specialty. In the laboratory construction process, colleges and universities should stick to the ideas of teaching reform, deepen the reform of experiment teaching, and strive to improve the quality of experiment and practice teaching. The scientific management of the laboratory should be strengthened, the management level and comprehensive effect should be improved, and the enthusiasm of the laboratory personnel should be fully aroused.

Construction of learning environment is also be concerned by process equipment and control engineering specialty. Excellent class of process equipment and control engineering should order more academic journals and rich electronic books. In addition, the excellent class should build the system of resource-sharing among libraries with help of other universities in same province, and then more valuable documents can be obtained for students in excellent class of process equipment and control engineering.

Conclusion

Engineering education plays an important role in China’s higher education, and the quality of engineering talents training will affect the development of higher education. Process equipment and control engineering specialty in a university has reformed the engineering talents training mechanism based on excellence engineer program, and it has constructed five practice bases through the cooperation with enterprises. To promote the implement of excellence engineer program, the process equipment and control engineering specialty should strengthen the construction of the engineering training center and the school-enterprise cooperation mode. The work of excellence engineer program should be combined with the certification of engineering education. The excellent engineer program of process equipment and control engineering specialty should be further amended to satisfy the requirement of economic and social development and enhance the international and domestic competitiveness of graduates.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: This research is supported by “Research project of Postgraduate education and teaching reform in **** University (No.2018Y14).”

ORCID iD

Bin Zhao

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