Zunyi Normal University | Chinese Universities

Zunyi Normal College, with a hundred year’s tradition for potential teachers’ education, is located at Zunyi, Guizhou province, a city well-known for “a turning point “ in the history of Chinese revolution. The year 1907 witnessed the birth of Zunyi Primary Normal School under the concept of“training teachers for education”, which laid down the foundation for modern teachers’ education in Zunyi. Then, Zunyi Normal Specialized School was officially founded in 1958 and upgraded to Zunyi Normal College in 2001. The college successfully passed the college teaching proficiency assessment of the Ministry of Education with good performance in 2007. what’s more, it was awarded “a college with beautiful campus in Guizhou” , “a college with distinctive culture” and “ a civilization unit around China” in 2008, 2011 and 2014 respectively.

Zunyi Normal College is a school with red revolution tradition. When the Red Army passed by Zunyi during the Long March, revolutionists of the older generation such as Mao Zedong and Zhu De held the meetings of tens of thousands of people at the original location of the college and the students influenced by the revolutionary thought enthusiastically participated in the revolution. The school also became the spreading center of new ideas and cultures in the north of GuiZhou Province.

After hundreds of years’ development, the college has formed the school motto of “making people with virtues and studious for practical purposes”, the school spirits of “abiding by morality and justice, cultivating quality and encouraging study” ,the teaching style of “valuing both quality and ability and highlighting both virtue and knowledge”, and the learning style of “devoting to learning and thinking, pursuing knowledge and truth”. Following the duty of “keeping a foothold in the west and serving the mountainous area”, the college has educated a large number of excellent primary and secondary school teachers who take root in and work at the basic level of the western areas.

With the comprehensive reform and the transformation of higher education, Zunyi Normal College has constantly put forward new ideas of development. It centers on education, teaching and personnel training, strives to create a comprehensive university and to train high quality applied talents to meet the needs of local economic and social development, highlighting application, locality and multi-disciplines, in order to achieve the purpose of the transformation of higher education from teacher-training-orientation to comprehensive education, from elementary-education orientation to all-round service to the development of local economy and social progress, from basic theoretic cultivation to the training of practical ability, and from basic theoretic research to application studies. Concisely, that is “one center”, “two objectives”, “three highlights”, and “four transformations”.

Zunyi Normal college has four campuses, covering an area of 752 mu, with the house-building area of 330 thousand square meters; besides, the new campus named “Xinpu” under construction covers an area of 2000 mu. The college has 1129 staff members, including 728 full-time teachers. Among these full teachers, 412 are with master degree, 110 are with doctoral degree, 123 are professors and 341 are vice-professors. There are 22 educational departments with 60 majors (including 3 provincial majors) covering 9 branches of learning (including 4 provincial elite course program)such as literature, science, engineering, agriculture, laws, pedagogy, history, administration, etc. And there are about 12987 undergraduates enrolled from all over China, in addition, there are about 70 international students from Russia, Laos, Tanzania, etc. Currently it has 1 key featured disciplines, 3 key disciplines of provincial level, and 6 key supporting disciplines of the provincial level. There are 2 elite provincial teachers. And the college possesses 1 provincial teaching pilot center, 2 provincial teams for technological innovation, 2 provincial teams for teaching program, 2 key featured labs with provincial level, 1 provincial engineering center and 2 research base for humanities and social sciences of college/university in Guizhou province. In 2011, the college was granted by the Ministry of Education as the title of “The Base School for Educating Red Classical Arts ”, and in 2013, the research center for CPC’s spirit and cultural resources in this college was conferred by the Ministry of Education as the title of “Research Base for Humanities and Social Sciences”. In spite of the fierce competition about employment, the job rate in the college can still maintain 90%, or above.

Zunyi Normal College is now dedicated to uniting all of its talents and gathering its energy to become an example of application-oriented university. With the Scientific Development Outlook as the guideline, we are committed to deepening the reform and strengthening our innovation ability. We are striving to improve the teaching and scientific research ability of our teachers and perfect and optimize our educational majors. Our mission is to educate our students in education, engineering, agriculture, economy, business and management that will best serve the economic, social, and cultural development of the region and the nation. We are focused on cultivating the high-quality talents with the spirit of devotion, innovation, and cooperation. We are dedicated to building an open, innovative, cooperative and excellent application-oriented university that will support the cultural, economic and social development of the region with talents, intelligence and advanced technology.

The International Education College (International Exchange and Cooperation Office) of Zunyi Normal University was developed on the basis of the "Foreign Exchange and Cooperation Office" established in September 2012. In March 2016, the "Foreign Exchange and Cooperation Office" was renamed the "International Exchange and Cooperation Office", and the International Education College was established at the same time. The re-established International Education Institute (International Exchange and Cooperation Office) not only undertakes the enrollment, management and teaching of international students, but also is responsible for the school's foreign-related administrative affairs.

The college currently has dozens of full-time and part-time teachers, of which professors and associate professors account for more than 80% of the total, and teachers with master's and doctoral degrees account for more than 60% of the total number of teachers. The college has a special dormitory for international students, an activity room for international students, and a classroom for international students. There are currently 17 people from Laos, Tanzania, Vietnam, Russia, Mongolia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Zambia, Uzbekistan, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Guinea-Bissau, Tajikistan, Cambodia, and Bangladesh International students study in our college. The training of international students in our college is divided into two stages. The first stage is Chinese language education, and the second stage is academic education. International students can enter the academic education stage after passing the Chinese Proficiency Test Level 4 (HSK4).

In addition to earnestly doing a good job in international education-related work, our school is also responsible for the school's foreign affairs. In order to promote the school's opening to the outside world, as of May 2019, dozens of cooperative relations between the school and foreign (overseas) universities, educational authorities, and educational organizations have been promoted, with hundreds of teacher-student exchanges. With the development of the school, the department will carry forward the past and the future, and strive to create a new situation for international schooling.