About the UWI CIIT
The UWI China Institute of Information Technology (UWI CIIT) was formed in February 2016 after an agreement was signed between The UWI and the GIST.
In the first instance, The UWI CIIT will offer a BSc Software Engineering programme (four and one-half years including a six-month paid internship) with a major in Mobile Application Technologies, beginning in September 2016.
The programme comprises 126 credits and will be offered as a 2+2 programme, with students spending the first two years in the Caribbean and the succeeding two years in China. Students will then have an opportunity to complete a six-month paid internship at an IT company in the Suzhou Industrial Park (the “Silicon Valley” of China). English is the primary language of instruction for the programme, however Chinese language and cultural training will be provided as a part of the curriculum.
This collaborative programme offered by The UWI and GIST is well aligned with the local, regional and international computing industries’ needs.
Courses at The UWI CIIT will be offered in a blended mode with online instruction/video feeds provided by the Institute location where the course is being primarily delivered. Tutorials, laboratory sessions and other interactions with students will be conducted in a face-to-face mode by instructors at the various institutes.
About The UWI and GIST
The University of the West Indies (UWI)
Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a fully-fledged, regional University with close to 50,000 students. Today, The UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with three physical campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and an Open Campus, which altogether serves 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos. The UWI’s faculty and students come from more than 40 countries and The University has collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food and Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities and Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. The UWI’s priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and overall development of the Caribbean region. The introduction of this new BSc Software Engineering (Mobile Application Technologies) is envisioned as the launch pad for Caribbean technology innovation and entrepreneurship, and directly aligned to The UWI’s mission of supporting Caribbean development.
The Global Institute of Software Technology, Suzhou (GIST)
GIST is a joint venture between GEM Suzhou, Microsoft, and Suzhou Science and Technology Town (SSTT). As a unique institution of higher learning driving innovation in software technology, GIST was granted permission by the Jiangsu Provincial Education Bureau to recruit students through independent enrollment. GIST was set up as a provincial-level dazhuan (diploma) college in 2007.
GIST enrolled its first batch of 1,800 students in September 2007. Today the College has over 4,700 dazhuan students pursuing courses in software engineering and information technology. GIST SND Campus has a 10,000 student capacity. GIST also offers educational programmes in the GEM SIP Campus in the Suzhou Industrial Park. GIST's operating philosophy is to combine theory and practice, and expose software graduates to the international state-of-the-art. Hence, "International Cooperation, Production-Study-Research Integration" are combined into practice in our unique education model of "Classroom-Teaching-Project Simulation-Paid Practicum", covering both the teaching of software technology and foreign languages (English and Japanese). GIST's vision is to prepare students with world-class professional competence for successful careers in a global society. GIST has over a hundred faculty members. Among them are professors from Tsinghua University, assistant professors, postgraduates, teachers with 'double-qualifications' proficient in both education and software, certified lecturers from Microsoft, project managers and software engineers from leading software enterprises, senior project managers and process management experts, full-time foreign experts from abroad including Europe and America, and returnees studying abroad.
