Abstract: As a core component of innovation and entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities, academic competitions are an important approach to enhance students’ self-learning abilities and creative thinking, as well as boost their teamwork spirit so that they can put the technical expertise they have learned to practice. In addition, students’ achievements in academic competitions are an explicit evaluation indicator commonly used in the recruitment for fresh graduates by companies and interviews for further study among colleges and universities. Promoting the integration of professional teaching and academic competitions is not only in line with Chinese policies, but also follows the development trend of the era. To this end, cooperative optimization should be emphasized in the process of cultivating professional talents which aims to improve the teaching process, establish a system for talent cultivation by academic competitions, and expand the connectivity among undergraduate education, industries, and research. Based on the status quo of cultivation of undergraduate students in local colleges and universities, the paper expounded on the talent cultivation system combining professional teaching and academic competitions as well as clarified the requirements on integration of teaching resources in the process of implementing the combined talent cultivation system. On that basis, a collaborative optimization-based talent development mode was proposed for artificial intelligence and robotics, new engineering majors.

Key words: Cultivation of new engineering talents, Professional teaching, Academic competitions, Organic integration