Improving the Professional Competences of Engineers to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by UNESCO draw the global map of sustainable development including engineering education. In China, ‘Strategy of Innovation-driven Development’ & ‘One Belt One Road’ not only brought new opportunities and challenges to the engineering education, but also had great influence on the trend of continuing engineering education in the future. To investigate the current situation of the graduates' professional competences of continuing engineering education, and promote the sustainable development of the professional competences of engineers, the research group did the survey in Tongji University in November 2015. The survey used the random sample of engineering graduates among four engineering majors including Architecture, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Traffic Engineering. Data descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were processed by SPSS software. This paper has concluded that the continuing engineering education should be connected with formal engineering education effectively, improve the professional competence of the students’ solving the real problems and teamwork, and reinforce the engineering ethics. On the other hand, the continuing engineering education should be integrated into the global environment, broaden the global perspective of teachers and students, cultivate student’s ability of cooperation and adaptation to cross-cultural environment. Thus it can improve the quality of continuing engineering education and push the engineering education toward sustainable development goals.