International Education College (IEC) hosted the special session Guidance from Excellent Mentors, Building Dreams through Science and Innovation in Spring Semester at the One-Stop College Student Activity & Service Center, aiming to strengthen students’ innovative practical capabilities and guide them to compete in disciplinary events. The lecture, themed An Overview of Disciplinary Competitions for University Students, was given by Prof. Liu Zhe from the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and drew a large group of Chinese and overseas students.
During the sharing session, Prof. Liu gave a systematic overview of collegiate disciplinary competitions. He grouped all national, provincial and university-level official events listed in Liaoning’s official catalogue and campus grading standards into three major categories: emerging engineering, emerging liberal arts and comprehensive innovation competitions. He cited representative project directions for the first two categories, namely robotics, aeronautical design under emerging engineering and e-commerce under emerging liberal arts, supported by real competition cases. Afterwards, he presented three flagship comprehensive innovation contests as typical examples: the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (a global platform integrating academic research with industrial innovation exchanges), alongside the iCAN College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and the Undergraduate Training Program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Beyond category introduction, he shared practical guidance on team building and pre-competition preparation in the final part of the presentation.
Besides listing competition resources, the speaker highlighted the practical benefits of taking part in contests. He noted that such competitions cultivate students’ innovative thinking, practical capabilities and teamwork awareness. For international participants, these events serve as valuable global academic platforms to exchange ideas with peers from different countries, expand international horizons and achieve breakthroughs in cross-border competitions.
The event concluded with an interactive Q&A session. Many domestic and international students posed questions about team formation, registration schedules and training preparation. This lecture laid a solid foundation for students to plan their competition paths. Moving forward, IEC will roll out follow-up themed workshops to offer sustained tutoring for students aiming for high-level disciplinary competitions.
