Up to 10 scholarships will be offered to students affected by the April earthquake in Sichuan as part of a new agreement between the University of Glasgow and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).

The scholarships will cover the tuition fees for the jointly-delivered four-year BEng (Honours) Electronic & Electrical Engineering programme, which was launched by the two universities in April at UESTC’s Qingshuihe campus. They will be available to students starting their studies over the next two years.

The development of the humanitarian scholarships is just one activity of several agreed under a new Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two institutions in Shenzhen during a trade mission to China by Humza Yousef, the Scottish Government’s Minister for External Affairs and International Development.

The University will also offer up to 90 excellence scholarships over the next three years to cover half of the cost of tuition to encourage academically-excellent high school graduates to apply. The scholarships will be awarded on an annual basis.

Professor John Chapman, Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Glasgow who signed the agreement with Professor Houjun Wang, Vice President of UESTC, said: “This latest agreement further strengthens our partnership and demonstrates our commitment to working together to offer students a world-class education experience.

“Attracting the brightest and best students is our aim and the scholarships we have agreed to offer will help us do that.

“We are also acutely aware of the devastating impact of the recent earthquake in Sichuan so we felt that specific scholarships to help students affected by this tragedy would be beneficial.

“The University of Glasgow-UESTC Joint School is the first initiative of its kind in China involving a Scottish university and one of the biggest transnational education collaborations of any UK university so we are particularly proud to do what we can to support it.”

Prof Wang said: “We fully understand that it is our shared vision and philosophy of quality education that has brought us together. We are confident of our cooperation because we are now making efforts and new commitment to the collaboration as we both, signing this MOU, promise pooling scholarships for outstanding students to enjoy more resources from both universities.”

Since initial discussions in 2009, the University of Glasgow and UESTC have forged a close partnership that involves joint research and student mobility and a joint school in Chengdu which will start a BEng (Honours) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering programme in September with annual entry building to in excess of 200 students. Graduates will receive degrees from both universities.

The joint school will create between 10-15 jobs in Glasgow and China.

 

For more information contact Stuart Forsyth in the University of Glasgow Media Relations Office on +44 (0)141 330 4831 or email stuart.forsyth@glasgow.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

Renowned as China’s birthplace for the national electronic industry, the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) is situated in the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in Southwest China. UESTC was founded in 1956 through the combination of the electronic divisions of three well established universities; Shanghai Jiaotong University, Nanjing Institute of Technology and South China Institute of Technology. UESTC became the one of the China’s key universities in 1960, and is one of the seven earliest universities in national defence. In 1997 it was included as one of the first universities in ‘Project 211’, a project in China for developing 100 first-class universities and a number of key fields of research for the 21st century. In 2001, UESTC was admitted into the nation’s ‘Project 985’, a project aimed at supporting the development of world-class research-orientated universities.  During the past fifty years UESTC has evolved from a University specialising in electronic information, to a key multidisciplinary university with electronic science and technology as its nucleus, engineering as its major field and an integrated approach to science, engineering, management and liberal arts.

 

First published: 26 June 2013

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