On Dec 18th, the French Polytech Group Council announced that Tianjin International Engineering Institute (TIEI) at Tianjin University in China has officially become its 16th member institute and its only overseas institute by far. The announcement was made by Prof. Yves Bernard, the director of Polytech Paris-sud, the coordinator of Polytech Group in a ceremony held at Sorbonne University, France.

"It is a great honor for us to become a member of the Polytech Group. That means our engineering education is highly appraised by the elite education of French engineers." Dr. SHAN Xiaolin, Party Secretary of TIEI said during the ceremony. He believed that by joining the Group, TIEI would establish a closer relationship with other 15 French members and boost cooperation in student exchange programs, joint training of talents, cultural communications, summer school projects, etc. "We will share the faculty resources with all the Polytech Group members and provide engineer students with more overseas internship opportunities." SHAN noted.

In the ceremony, GUAN Jing, the vice-director of TIEI introduced the general situation of the institute. She reckoned that being in the Group, TIEI and the other 15 partner schools of Polytech Group would not only provide degree programs for students from member universities, but also support exchanges between teachers and students in partner institutions. 

It is learnt that before TIEI's admission into the Group, the Polytech Group included 15 French public faculties dedicated to higher education, research and innovation in engineering. These institutions, under the authority of the French Ministry of Higher Education, formed a network of 15 French universities, sharing a unique model for their 15 faculties of engineering. All the Polytech faculties offer Ingénieur's degrees accredited by the Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur (CTI) as French "Diplômes d'Ingénieur". The diploma is certified by the Chinese Ministry of Education as a master's degree.

Tianjin International Engineering Institute (TIEI) formally founded in 2014，is established under the partnership between Tianjin University in China and French Polytech Nice-Sophia, with the aim to train high-level engineering talents by following the French training mode. TIEI passed the authoritative certification of CTI in 2017 and issues both Tianjin University's master's degree and CTI certificate to its qualified graduates.