On June 13, the School of System Design and Intelligent Manufacturing (SDIM) at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) held its New Engineering Education Spring Course 2020 Final Presentation. Thirty-two students exhibited their outcomes through an online project presentation and on-stage prototype demonstration.

In February 2020, the first New Engineering Education Spring Course of SDIM was launched. The three courses on offer are “SDM 212 Design Thinking and Engineering,” “SDM 232 Mechanical Design and Manufacturing,” and “SDM 262 Fundamentals of Materials Engineering.” The Spring course seeks to integrate and link the knowledge of the three sub-courses for students to gain the qualities and skills for becoming excellent engineers.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, students were isolated at home. It brought significant challenges to the conducting of New Engineering Education, which takes “Team Collaboration” and “Learning by Doing” as two of the main characteristics. SDIM faculty and students constantly broke the boundaries of thinking and jointly explored the implementable curriculum plans. From the project “PET Bottle Recycle Robot for the SUSTech Campus” the hot social pain-point of “garbage sorting” to the project “Device to Improve the Hygienic Quality of Home” for meeting the higher requirements of the indoor environment of health due to the epidemic prevention, they quickly adjusted learning projects by closely facing the real need of the society. Finally, SDIM adopted the learning project the “Salad Spinner – Design, Produce, Assembly and Test,” which was the practical project combining with current situation and conditions.

College of Engineering deputy dean Bi ZHANG commented after he watched the presentation. He said that the presentations well reflected the great efforts of SDIM professors and students they delivered during the course. He looked forward to seeing the further developed products with the knowledge and skills the students have gained from SDIM’s NEE course.

SDIM head Jingshen WU expressed that SDIM aims to cultivate students to have a strong feeling of the nation and accountability. He encouraged students that when facing difficulties and challenges, never easy to give up, keep moving forward, dare to challenge and innovate. These are the critical essences of the New Engineering Education of SDIM.

After one and a half years of development, SDIM has already launched Summer Courses and Spring Courses of New Engineering Education. The new courses for the 2020 Autumn Semester will begin enrolling soon.