About Nanfang College Guangzhou
Nanfang College Guangzhou (formerly Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University) is a comprehensive applied general undergraduate higher education institution approved by the Ministry of Education in 2006, a pilot institution of comprehensive reform of higher education system in Guangdong Province, the first batch of general undergraduate transformation pilot colleges and universities in Guangdong Province, a project construction unit of master’s degree awarding in Guangdong Province, and a supporting unit of National Social Science Foundation and National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The university has put forward and practiced the general principle of running the school “for the growth of students, the development of teachers and the future of the university”, and gathered a group of department heads, discipline leaders and management cadres who inherited the fine tradition and spiritual culture of domestic first-class universities, and always dreamed of promoting the reform of Chinese higher education in this “experimental field” of the university and realizing the vision of “building a high-level university with distinctive characteristics at the forefront of Chinese applied universities”.
Basic Information
The university is located in Conghua District, Guangzhou City, which is known as the “Pearl on the Tropic of Cancer” and the “Back Garden of Guangzhou”. The campus is well laid out, beautiful and tranquil, and is a wonderful place for cultivating moral and studying. There are 19,162 undergraduates and 2,306 students in continuing education. After more than ten years of construction, the university has developed into a campus of a thousand acres, with a scale of 10,000 people, a complete range of disciplines, a concentration of famous teachers and a large number of talents.
The university library covers an area of 29,100 square meters and is rich in literature and information resources. There are more than 1,974,900 paper books and 1.6 million electronic books; it has various databases and platforms such as China Knowledge Network, while realizing the sharing of electronic resources with Sun Yat-sen University Library; it adopts the management mode of 24-hour opening to meet readers’ needs in all aspects.
Academic Development
The university has 42 undergraduate majors in 10 departments, forming a discipline system with management, literature and engineering as the main subjects and economics, medicine and art as the coordinating subjects with reasonable structure and complementary advantages.
The university implements the strategy of “differentiated” dislocation development and “unbalanced” support for the development of excellence, and builds disciplines and majors with characteristics and high levels. There are two national first-class undergraduate majors, two provincial first-class undergraduate majors, two provincial key disciplines, one IEET accredited major, one provincial comprehensive reform pilot major, four provincial specialty majors, one provincial key major and one provincial strategic emerging specialty major, one provincial demonstration major for cultivating applied talents, one provincial excellence talent cultivation program, and one provincial practical teaching program for college students. 1 major, 7 provincial practical teaching bases for college students, 6 provincial experimental zones for innovation of talent cultivation mode, 3 provincial experimental teaching demonstration centers, 1 provincial industrial college, 4 provincial teaching teams, 3 provincial first-class courses, 5 provincial model courses of curriculum thinking and government, 5 provincial high-quality resource sharing courses and 3 provincial online open courses.
In the past three years, the university has undertaken one National Social Science Foundation project, 54 provincial and ministerial level research projects (including three humanities and social science research projects of the Ministry of Education), and 43 horizontal projects; teachers have published 350 high-level papers in CSSCI, SSCI, SCI, EI, TSSCI and other core journals at home and abroad; 8 reports have been provided to the government for political advice, two of which have been approved by the main leaders of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and the provincial government. In 2020, the “Guangdong Local Governance Research Center” was approved as a new type of think tank with characteristics of general universities in Guangdong Province.
Faculty Construction
The university vigorously implements the strategy of “strengthening the university with talents”, builds the mechanism of “attracting, retaining and using” teachers’ classification and development, and continuously strengthens the construction of teachers’ team through external attraction and internal training, and establishes a teaching team with mainly full-time young and middle-aged key teachers, combining full-time and part-time, broad vision and good quality to meet the needs of cultivating applied undergraduate talents.
There are 850 full-time teachers, including 17 doctoral supervisors, 2 excellent talents of the new century from the Ministry of Education, 1 teaching master from the special support program of Guangdong Province, 2 provincial teaching masters, and 4 excellent teachers from Southern Guangdong; 170 teachers with doctoral degree, accounting for 19.93% of the total number of full-time teachers; 259 teachers with associate senior titles or above, accounting for 30.36% of the total number of full-time teachers. There are 300 “double-teacher and double-competent” teachers, accounting for 35% of the total number of full-time teachers. In recent years, 34 teachers have been selected to participate in the visiting scholar program for young and middle-aged teachers in Guangdong Province, more than 20 teachers have visited overseas for further study, and 43 teachers have been studying for doctoral degrees on-the-job.
There are 314 part-time teachers in the university, among whom 3 professors, namely Xia Shuzhang, Huang Tianji and Chen Pingping, are appointed as academic advisors, 7 influential scholars, including Ren Jiantao and Wang Zhemin, are appointed as chair professors, and nearly 200 managers and technical elites with practical experience are appointed as industry mentors.
In the past three years, teachers won one first prize of provincial education teaching achievement award, one special prize of the first university teachers’ teaching innovation competition, four awards of provincial higher education society for excellent cases of online teaching, one second prize of excellent teaching achievement, two first and two second prizes each for excellent cases of online teaching, and 13 second prizes for excellent cases of curriculum thinking and government.
From 2019, the university has launched the plan of introducing 100 young doctors to the world, the plan of introducing dual-teacher doctors to the industry, and the recruitment plan of discipline leaders and chief student growth mentors, and intends to add 300 high-level teachers in 3-5 years, so as to forge ahead for the creation of a first-class teaching team.
Talent Cultivation
Based on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area, the university adheres to the education concept of “transmission of subject expertise, transmission of core values, and cultivation of competence”, and organically integrates professional education, thinking education, general education and growth education to cultivate applied talents with ideal beliefs, civic qualities and sound personality, as well as broad professional foundation, strong practical ability and innovative spirit.
Through education and teaching reform, the university builds a three-dimensional talent cultivation program that integrates “discipline and professional knowledge transfer, core values transmission, and ability and quality cultivation”, and implements “the government, school, industry and enterprises jointly build a management and consulting team for discipline and professional transformation and development, a double-teacher and double-competent teacher team, an applied talent cultivation program, an applied curriculum, and an applied talent training program. We have also built a platform for personalized development and cultivation of students by combining “free transfer of majors + full credit system + full tutor system”, forming a “free choice, strict management and careful guidance”. It has formed a mechanism of “free choice, strict management and careful guidance” for students’ growth, and won the first prize in Guangdong Province for the typical experience of employment of graduates from ordinary colleges and universities and the typical experience of entrepreneurship.
In order to truly implement the all-round training of talents from “knowledge, ability and quality”, the university has been promoting the development of “three-dimensional” talent training program for each major since 2015. The so-called “three-dimensional” talent training program is to abandon the “two skins” of the Party Committee of state-owned universities, which is responsible for the growth of students, and the department chairs, who are responsible for knowledge transmission. In order to eliminate the gap between “transmission of academic and professional knowledge, transmission of core values and cultivation of abilities and qualities”, we require all department chairs who are party members to serve as party secretaries and take responsibility for both student growth and knowledge transmission.
In order to ensure that students’ growth becomes the primary task of the university, the university has established a system of lecture listening and teaching inspection by the university leaders, and set up a teaching quality supervision team at the university and faculty levels to monitor the teaching and learning style; established a first-year department to help first-year students better adapt to university life and move from “self-discipline” to “self-discipline”; implemented a full tutor system, and agreed in the employment contract that teachers will give priority to serving students’ growth, allowing teachers to serve as growth and academic tutors for students, forming a new teacher-student relationship that “stirs” together and helps students develop good study and living habits.
In order to provide a good platform for students to pursue excellence, the school has established the Institute of Government and Business and the School of Scholarship. The Institute of Political and Business Studies adopts the four-in-one model of “crossover, integration, interaction, and enhancement” for the cultivation of complex political and business talents, laying a solid foundation for students to grow into outstanding political and business talents. Daren School is benchmarked against the standards of top universities in China and adopts a talent cultivation model that combines more profound professional education and broader liberal arts education to provide a strong guarantee for students to develop further in their disciplines and professions in the future.
In order to provide students with a platform to expand their knowledge and enlighten their wisdom, the university level has opened brand lectures such as “Southern Forum” and “Ambassador Forum”, and each faculty has opened a series of lectures such as “Political and Business Elite Forum”, “Business Lecture Hall” and “Financial Master Lecture Forum”, combining the characteristics of disciplines and majors. In the past three years, the university and its faculties have invited experts and scholars, government leaders and industry elites from home and abroad to give more than 300 high-level lectures, creating a strong academic atmosphere.
To provide a platform for students to integrate into the international higher education environment, the university has cooperated with more than 20 famous foreign universities, including the University of Washington and the University of New Mexico, to implement diversified joint training models such as exchange students, summer and winter study tours, internships, dual degrees, and undergraduate studies, etc. So far, more than 300 students have gone abroad for exchange studies. The cooperation projects all clearly require the partner universities to send professors to teach courses at school every year, and young teachers must attend classes to improve their teaching ability and expand their horizons.
In the past three years, students have won 146 provincial and ministerial-level academic and professional competitions, published 24 academic papers in core journals, applied for more than 130 intellectual property rights, enrolled in more than 300 graduate schools and more than 900 civil servants and institutions. In 2019, the reform and practice of “school-enterprise collaboration, learning and creating as one” to cultivate “3-10-1” entrepreneurial e-commerce professionals won the first prize of Guangdong Province Education Teaching Achievement Award. In 2020, the school’s “Martyr Technology Team” won the gold medal in the 6th China International “Internet+” Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in Guangdong Province.
