On the morning of March 12, Fu Zhifeng, President of CUEB met with Prof. Alex Neil, Vice President of University of Southampton at Boyuan Building. On behalf of the two sides, they signed “4+1” Master’s Program and “1+1+1” Master’s Joint Training Program and held friendly discussion on further cooperation.

Fu Zhifeng extended warm welcome to the the delegation. After a brief introduction of school’s basic information, Fu pointed out that CUEB, as a key university of Beijing Municipality, attached great importance to its international approach to education. Students were passionate about studying aboard, with an increasing number of exchange programs and students sent out. He hoped that through the exchange program between two schools, more undergraduates and postgraduates could get a chance to study at the University of Southampton, improving their international vision and employment competitiveness. At the same time, CUEB also welcomed the students from the University of Southampton for study in our university, thus creating a two-way interaction. In addition, the two sides hoped to promote teachers’ academic exchanges and cooperation with scientific research projects, so as to achieve mutual benefits.

Prof. Alex Neil then introduced the University of Southampton, including the disciplines development, faculty building, student numbers and cooperation with Chinese universities. He said that student exchange programs have been carried out between the two universities. Currently, there are four exchange undergraduates, from School of Labor Economics studying at the University of Southampton. He expressed his sincere welcome to students from CUEB to study in Southampton. He also hoped to send out students from the University of Southampton to Beijing for a short term exchange, and recommend the postgraduates to CUEB for English-teaching internship, so as to further expand the cooperation.

After the meeting and signing ceremony, Feng Xiliang, Dean of School of Labor Economics, Fan Wei, Deputy Dean of School of Labor Economics and Lei Xiaotian, Program Leader, thoroughly discussed the latest development of student exchange program with Stephen Mortimer, Vice Minister of Department of Commercial Law, Song Pan, the Director of Department of Humanities and Department of International Cooperation. They also talked about sending out students from the University of Southampton to CUEB for a short-term exchange and social practice projects. Afterwards, accompanied by Yin Zhichao, Dean of School of Finance and Yang Yang, Assistant Dean of School of Finance, Stephen Mortimer and Song Pan met with students of School of Finance, who applied to the programs, and introduced them “4+1” Master’s Program and “1+1+1” Master’s Joint Training Program in detail, so that the students had deeper understanding of the project and requirements. Huang Liwei, Vice Director of Division of International Education and Exchange, accompanied Prof Alex Neil and Andrew Malicki, CEO of Department of Humanities, visited the CUEB History Museum.

University of Southampton, founded in 1862, is a public research university in Southampton, at the south coast of UK, and it is also one of “the Russell Group”. University of Southampton ranked 102^nd on the 2018 QS World University Rankings. CUEB and University of Southampton formally established the inter-university cooperative relationship in 2014. A student-exchange program was signed in 2015 between the School of Labor Economics of CUEB and Department of Humanities of University of Southampton. The two sides also signed the“4+1” Master’s Program, “1+1+1” Master’s Joint Training Program and “Study Aboard” program in 2016. At present, CUEB has sent four undergraduates in total to the University of Southampton for the semester-long exchange program.