China University of Petroleum-Beijing (CUP), founded in 1953, is a national key university directly affiliated to China’s Ministry of Education. Its main campus lies at the southern foothill ofJundu Mountain in Beijing and the Karamay campus is located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. With a distinctive characteristic in petroleum, CUP mainly focuses on engineering disciplines while having a coordinated development in multi-disciplines. In 1997, CUP became a member of China’s first Project 211 universities and was nominated as one of the universities to construct National Innovative Platform for Advantageous Disciplines in 2006. In 2017, CUP was selected to participate in the "Double First-Class" Initiative, starting a new journey to build itself into a world-class university with Chinese characteristics.
CUP is in a leading position in the petroleum and petrochemical disciplines in China. According to the ESI statistics by May 2020, CUP ranked within top 1% in ESI in the world for 5 disciplines: Chemistry, Engineering, Material Science, Geosciences and Computer Science, with the Engineering discipline getting into top 1‰ in ESI globally. Based on the petroleum industrial structure, CUPhas established a discipline structure featuring: preponderantdisciplines of Oil & Gas Engineering, Geological Resources andGeological Engineering, supporting disciplines of Chemistry,Material Science and Engineering, and newly emerging interdisciplinaryof Unconventional Oil & Gas, New Energy andOffshore Oil & Gas Engineering.
CUP is known as the “Cradle of Petroleum Talents” for cultivatingnearly 200,000 excellent professional talents since its founding. There are over 16,000 students studying at CUP, including 8,074 full-time undergraduates, 5,945 master students, 1,543 PhD students and 702 international students. Graduates from CUPenjoy great favour among society and employers, contributingto a high employment rate for years.
Guided by the principle of “Talents are the Primary Resources”,CUP insists on implementing the development strategy of “TalentsPowering the University” and has built a highly competent faculty.Currently, there are 1,499 staff members, including 268 professors and 389 associate professors, 341 academic PhD supervisors and 133 PhD supervisors of engineering. Among them are 3 academiciansof the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), 2 academicians ofthe Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). CUP promoted91 excellent researchers and professors, 9 innovation teams and 3 teaching teams that have been conferred honorary titles or funded at the national level and 6 teaching teams at the provincial level.Itwon 2second prizes in the 2018 National Teaching Achievement Award (High Education) from the Ministry of Education. CUP makes inclusive talent introduction channels and tailors diverse talent development plans to impel the growth of young teachers.
CUPvalues scientific research adhering to the principle of “undertaking major projects, establishing large platforms, organizing strong teams, making important achievements and contributions in research”. Ithas 2 state key laboratories, 9 national research innovationsub-platforms, 23 research innovation platforms at provincial andministerial level and 18 key lab branches of China National PetroleumCorporation (CNPC). It has dominatedthe domestic leading position in several researching areas with an outstanding advantage in the disciplines of petroleum and petrochemistry.It has achieved rapid development in the fields of unconventional oil and gas, new energy and other emerging issues. Since the implementation of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan period(2016-2020), CUP has undertaken 1467 national researchprojects, winning 13 National Science and Technology Awards with 5 for which CUP is the major participant. It has been awarded 283 prizes of Science and Technology awards at provincial andministerial level and for the non-governmental sector with 173 for which CUP is the major participant. It ranked 10th in2014 and 2015 and 7th in 2017 among all the universities in China forthe number of national prizes it has won for general projects.
CUP insists on the development philosophy of combining government, industry, education and research. The Ministry of Education and China’s 5 top petroleum enterprises signed the co-construction agreement on developing CUP in October 2013. Till now,CUP has reachedcomprehensive cooperation agreements with 144 entitiesincluding domesticgovernments, enterprises and public institutions. It has explored a new talent training model taking advantage of the resources from enterprises and the university: 76 petroleum and petrochemical enterprises have launched scholarships in CUP and 13 have built auditoriums with distinctive features of the enterprises. Also, it jointly enrollspost doctors with 40 enterprise postdoctoral research stations. Moreover, it has established postgraduate workstations and joint training bases with 202 petroleum and petrochemical enterprises, set up student internship bases with 103 enterprises andstudent social practice bases with 69 petroleum and petrochemical enterprises. CUP actively pursues the innovation of talent training mechanism to combine resources from government, industry and university: It has jointly created Karamay Institute of Engineers with Karamay City and established Beijing Institute of Engineers with the research institutes ofChina’s 3 major oil companiesin Beijing, focusing on the implementation of Undergraduate Excellence Programand the training of professional degree graduates, taking new steps in the field of higher engineering education.
CUP attaches great importance to international exchangesand cooperation. Through the strategy of Internationalization, ithas been promoting international exchanges and cooperation andincreasing its global influence in higher education. It has maintained a large network of academic and industrial relationships with over 170 universities and enterprises abroad. And it has set up 13 international joint instituteswith world-famous universities and enterprises; moreover,it has established a Confucius Institute in cooperation withSan Francisco University in Quito, Ecuador. In 2018, CUP initiated Worldwide Energy University Network (WEUN) which has 31 member universities from 17 countries such as China, the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, etc. Responding to the Belt and Road Initiative actively, it has established cooperative links with over 60 universities and institutions from countries alongthe Belt and Road.It was selected to join the Belt and Road scholarship programof Beijing for international students and the Belt and Roadnational talent training base program of Beijing in 2017. It was approved to joinChinese Government Scholarship-Silk Road Scholarship Program in the same year andthe Chinese Government Scholarship-China-Africa Friendship Programand China-Africa Friendship General Scholar Programin 2019.
Adhering to the tradition of petroleum industry culture, a campus atmosphere with distinctive petroleum characteristics has been formed. Encouraged by the spirit of “being diligent, practical, dedicated, and pioneering” and inspired by the motto of “accumulating profound knowledge and solving practical problems”, the students lucubrate in the way of “diligence, rigour, truth-seeking and innovation” and the teachers dedicate to the cause of education upholding the belief of “teaching knowledge and fostering virtue”.
Standing at a new historical starting point, CUP will insistently strive to build itself into a “world-class” research university in petroleum and petrochemical sciences disciplines.
