A graduation ceremony for the Sino-French Engineer School’s graduates of 2017 and the conferment of the master’s degree and the French diploma of engineer was held at the second report hall of Beihang University’s new main building on the morning of March 18, 2017. Beihang University president and Chinese academician Xu Huibin, French academician Gérard Creuzet, Beihang University vice president Huang Haijun, French embassy official Thibault Curmi, general manager of the research and development center in Schlumberger China headquarters Cao Li, and EDF’s director of human resources in the Asia-Pacific region Aline Penot, among others from the government, university and companies, attended the ceremony, which was presided by the School’s deputy director Zhang Wei.
The ceremony started from the Chinese anthem, with the School’s Chinese director Hong Guanxin announcing a list of graduates for master’s degrees and the School’s French director Gille Fleury reading a list of awardees of engineer diploma. Xu, Creuzet, Huang and others awarded the degrees, diplomas, outstanding graduates, excellent thesis writers, and internship scholarships.
Chen Zhanqi and Qiu Jingbo, two representatives of the graduates, spoke in Chinese and French, expressing gratitude to their teachers and others as well as wishes to work toward the cooperation and exchanges between China and France.
Curmi and Cruzet addressed the ceremony. The former hailed the young and outstanding School as opening a new chapter for the two countries’ cooperation, as indicated by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the second meeting for China-France cultural exchanges in May 2015. The latter congratulated the students on their graduation and their admittance into the School’s alumni, and expected future in-depth cooperation with Beihang University.
President Xu addressed the graduates at the end of the ceremony, indicating that the School should meet the country’s strategic needs, follow the world’s frontier of higher engineering education, and adhere to its own orientation in order to cultivate international engineers for the country and society and become an example for Sino-French cooperation in relevant education. He also expected the graduates to continually carry forward the University’s patriotic spirit and pragmatic manner, explore new frontiers in their fields, and strive for perfection. Long lasting bonds of friendship and cooperation between the two countries and new glories of the School are the president’s final wishes.
The School’s students of 2010 and the graduates of 2017 have achieved extraordinary results, winning 36 group prizes at the University. A total of 617 students won prizes from the country, University and partner companies – 368 for comprehensive prizes, 153 for social work, 34 for competition, 25 for internship, and 37 for overseas studies. The prize money totaled 2.48 million yuan.
