School of Urban Construction and Transportation, formerly known as Department of Architectural Engineering, was founded in 1980 as one of the departments first set in Hefei University. It offers six undergraduate programs with over 1000 students currently enrolled: Civil Engineering, Architecture, Transportation Engineering, Smart Transportation, Engineering Management, and Civil Engineering (a Sino-German 2+3 Cooperative Program). By 2022, the School has a faculty of 80, including 10 professors, 17 associate professors, 1 professorate senior engineer, and 5 senior engineers, more than 90% of whom hold Master’s degree, and 30 hold Doctoral degree.
The School has 3 departments of Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Traffic Engineering, and 1 Experimentation Center consisting of 16 labs for Engineering Survey, Civil Engineering Materials, Engineering Mechanics, Soil Mechanics, Architectural Structure, Road Engineering, Engineering Geology, Architectural Physics, Architectural Models, Architectural Equipment, Architectural Innovation, Traffic Engineering, Fluid Mechanics and Engineering Management, with the fixed assets amounting to over 60 million yuan. The School also has the Collaborative Innovation Center for Safety Control Technology in Rail Transit Construction, Anhui Energy-saving Building Technology Platform, Architecture and Transportation Training Center (a national industry-education integration center), and 8 engineering technology centers and labs on-or-off campus.
The School has established a talent cultivation mode integrating knowledge, ability and comprehensive quality to meet the needs of social and economic development. It boasts 2 Anhui Provincial First-class Undergraduate Programs: programs of Civil Engineering and Transportation Engineering, program of Smart Transportation(one of the first batch off-catalog programs in China), and a Master degree program of Civil Engineering and Water Conservancy. It has been honored with 2 first prizes for National Teaching Achievement Award and 2 special prizes for Anhui Provincial Teaching Achievement Award. For the purpose of cultivating applied talents, the School has established a practical teaching system by carrying out industry-university-research cooperation with the government and enterprises to build a practical teaching base and an undergraduate internship and employment base.
In recent years, students have won numerous honors, including 1 first prize for National “THS” BIM Software Modeling Competition for College Students, 1 first prize or National Green Architectural Design Competition, 1 second prize for National Engineering Cost Skills and Innovation Competition for College Students, 1 first prize for the single item of Architecture and Road and Bridge Scale of the National Advanced Mapping Technology and Product Information Modeling Innovation Competition for College Students, together with awards for Anhui Provincial Challenge Cup, and provincial awards for the National English Competition for College Students.
In partnership with Hildesheim University of Applied Sciences in Germany, the School has offered a cooperative undergraduate program in Civil Engineering (2+3) since 2006. After 2 years at HFU, students will spend another 3 years at Hildesheim. Each year, teachers from both universities get engaged in teaching and research exchange as well as further study.