Concordia’s Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Two plus Two program provides Chinese students with a much-needed skill in response to China’s construction boom.

Former Concordia President Frederick Lowy led a Concordia delegation that visited Hunan University in 2005. The universities signed an agreement to continue the successful the Two plus Two program.

In 1998, the sleepy Chinese economic giant was beginning to waken. “At that time, China was booming with construction, but Hunan University did not have a building engineering program,” recalls Concordia Professor Fariborz Haghighat of the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Guoqiang Zhang, a visiting professor from Hunan University, was spending the year at Concordia’s Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science. “The visiting scholar thought of the idea of sending their students here for four years. It turned out that would have been financially very difficult, so we figured out a way that their best students could study building engineering there two years and at Concordia two years,” Haghighat says.

They called the program Two plus Two. Since 2003, Hunan University has sent a number of its top engineering students to Concordia each year so they can spend their next two years here. “It’s been very successful,” says Haghighat. “The students who have come here have done well. The first year we started with two students, and now we have between five and 10 a year.”

Hunan University students must meet a number of requirements, including retaining top marks, having superior English language skills, a visa and the ability to finance themselves for two years.

The Two plus Two program is available to Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering undergraduate students only. Haghighat reports that within Concordia’s Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science they’re considering whether to expand Two plus Two to other programs. On the graduate level, “ China needs 4,000 to 5,000 professors over the next few years,” he says. “Because of the need to train PhDs, China has recently set up a scholarship fund to send their students here. One graduate student has been admitted to Concordia.” While not all Two plus Two graduates return home— one, in fact, has just begun his master’s degree at Concordia—the program provides a great benefit to a country in need of building and civil engineers, and Haghighat points out that other Chinese universities have now shown interest as well.

If you have any comments about this article, contact Howard Bokser, (514) 848-2424 ext. 3826, Howard.Bokser@concordia.ca