Undergraduate students will have the master’s supervisors, the doctorate supervisors and even academicians as their mentors, which will break the practice of “one choice for life”, enable students to have completely independent right of re-selecting their specialties and add values to the undergraduate education. On March 28, Southeast University convened the press release to officially release its “First-Class Undergraduate Education Initiative 2020”, which has comprehensively implemented important spirits expressed by the Meeting of National College Ideological Education Seminar, the National Education Conference, and the School Ideological and Political Theory Teachers' Symposium. The “Initiative” proposed adhering to the “morality establishment and talent cultivation” as the school’s fundamental assignment, persisting in the undergraduate education oriented, promoting the “four returns (return to common sense, return to due duty, return to original aspiration and return to dream)”, implementing the “20 Items of Teaching Reform”; meanwhile, based on the overall planning of large-class enrollment and cultivation, the mentorship system, the collegiate system, the complete credit system, the small class system, the individualization, the internationalization, the excellence system and the undergraduate-graduate integration would be implemented to cultivate talents in an innovative manner. In addition, a series of pioneering measures have been adopted to depict the “hard core” roadmap of cultivating leading talents.

    Zuo Wei, CPC Secretary of Southeast University, President Zhang Guangjun, Deputy CPC Secretary Zheng Jiamao and Vice President Jin Baosheng attended the press release. Journalists from the national, provincial and municipal media, principals from the functional departments including the president's office, the CPC Propaganda Department, the Academic Affairs Office, the Personnel Department, the Students Affairs Department, the Youth League Committee, the Laboratory, the Equipment Management Office, the Teacher and Teaching Development Center, principals of relevant colleges & departments and the student representatives, almost 100 persons in total, attended the event.

At the press release, Vice President Jin Baosheng officially released and interpreted the “First-Class Undergraduate Education Initiative 2020” on behalf of the school to the media. From the beginning of April 2018, Southeast University launched a three-month discussion on educational thought in the school with the theme of “deepening comprehensive education reform and cultivating first-class innovative talents”, thoroughly implemented Xi Jinping’s of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era and the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China so as to reshape the school’s new goal in terms of talent cultivation as per the new requirements on constructing a world-class university. Upon extensive discussions among teachers, students, alumni and people from all walks of life, and based on the experts’ repeated demonstrations, Southeast University’s “First-Class Undergraduate Education Initiative 2020” was finally released orienting at cultivation of leading talents.

    As proposed by the Initiative, Southeast University, surrounding the new mission and new requirements on constructing a “double first-class” university as imposed by the Party and the country, will strive to cultivate leading talents highlighting patriotism, international view of vision, leading the future and benefiting human peoples as its objective according to its mission of “1-10-100 Dream”; get rooted in the connotative construction according to the new cultivation pattern which emphasizes “leading by thought, capacity cultivation and knowledge teaching”; restructure the knowledge system as the priority to deepen the mode reform as the impetus, perfect the system mechanism as the guarantee and thus upgrade the quality of talent cultivation. 

The Initiative has set up five reform tasks, namely, “reforming the talent training objectives”, “restructuring the knowledge systems to cultivate leading talents”, “making innovation in the mode of cultivation to assist the students’ development”, “deepening the reform of institutional mechanism to stimulate the vitality of school management”, and “strengthening the education and teaching guarantees to upgrade the cultivation quality”. Meanwhile, the Initiative have also depicted the “road map” for the cultivation of leading talents. According to the Initiative, by 2020, the new wide-scope and individualized professional cultivation system on the basis of general education will be reconstructed according to the cultivation pattern of “profound foundation, wide scope, emphasis on cross-discipline and strong innovation”; a new mode of talent cultivation will be implemented; a “visualized, open, restrained and motivated” new education and teaching management mechanism will be established; a batch of courses and specialties involved in the “Two Ten-thousand Plan” (to construct ten thousand national-level first-class majors and ten thousand provincial-level first-class specialties) will the established; the rate of further study after undergraduate graduation will exceed 60% to basically form the new pattern of first-class undergraduate education. By 2025, a large number of advantageous specialties, superior courses, quality textbooks, reform achievements and students' innovation and entrepreneurial achievements will be ranked among the best among universities in China. Besides, the school’s undergraduate education will play a demonstration and leading role in national higher education with international influences. By 2030, the school’s undergraduate education will become internationally renowned and be ranked among world-class universities.

    Southeast University will focus on cultivating leading talents as its objective and task, implement many innovations in undergraduate education into the “20 Items of Educational Reform”, respectively, to optimize the professional and ecological layout, advance the large-scale enrollment and cultivation, promote the organic integration of ideological and political education elements into the “three classrooms”, intensify the innovative and practice education, consolidate the experimental teaching reform, promote the minors/degree construction, establish the undergraduate-graduate integrated cultivation system, explore the mentorship, the collegiate system and the complete credit system, enhance the depth and width of international talent cultivation, promote the quaternity research-oriented teaching model reform, deepen the employment quality project and the life education system, explore the virtual winter and summer vacation system, optimize the talent cultivationand governance structure, improve the teacher training mechanism, optimize the teaching rewarding mechanism, improve the teacher’s recruitment assessment and title/grade promotion system, consolidate the teaching grassroot organizations, establish the performance assessment methods for colleges (departments), and improve the teaching quality assurance system, etc..

    The unprecedented “20 Items of Educational Reform” put forward the cultivation mode reform to explore the mentorship system, the collegiate system and the complete credit system, aiming atpromoting the student’s personalized development. Thus the undergraduates may study from excellent master’s supervisors, doctorate supervisors and even academicians. This reform will establish the best platform for the undergraduates to cultivate the undergraduate students’ academic quality and standardability in an imperceptible manner. The school will arrange the disciplines according to the principles of “strong engineering, advantageous science, fine literal arts and featured medicine”, carry out top-level design, and implement cross-college enrollment and large-scale cultivation. When the students have been enrolled, they will be wholly allowed to choose their specialty again; meanwhile, the complete credit system and individualized cultivation will be promoted so as to open an intelligent “revolving door” for the students. All the undergraduate courses and some graduate courses are available to the students to study independently, and independent development credits and courses are added to enable interest to be the driving force for learning. From 2019 onwards, the school will gradually establish the “collegiate system” with stationed mentor arranged to provide instructions to the students' learning and activities at extracurricular time. In addition, the undergraduate-graduate integrated cultivation model will be established by setting up the cut-through course library to realize the interconnection of arranged courses and selected courses, break through the restrictions because of the student status and provide more choices of course selection to the students. In this case, the research subject can extend from the undergraduate to the graduate study, which can continuously enhance the innovative research abilities. The school will closely focus on the new requirements of “morality establishment, talent cultivation and cultivation of leading talents”, rely on strong disciplines and key laboratories, consider the transformation of major scientific research achievements and major internationally-leading engineering as the approach to set up more than 100 characteristic experimental teaching projects and virtual simulation experimental teaching projects that integrate ideological and political education, ideal and belief education, and patriotism education. In order to greatly improve the depth and width of internationalized talents, over 100 foreign teachers will be employed in the hope that about 30% undergraduates can study and exchange at top universities overseas. Meanwhile, efforts will be made to intensify the construction of international demonstration colleges with about 150 high-quality English courses opened. Moreover, the school will conductspecial education on the cultivation of global governance abilities so as to mobilize more students to be engaged in special practiceand voluntary practice at international organizations; the school will persist in strategy and cutting-edge technology oriented, integrate national responsibility and patriotism in the students’ outlook on employment and career choice, reserve and provide high-quality talents to key areas, major projects, important projects and fields, etc..

    The “20 Items of Teaching Reform” launched the “visualized, open, constrained and motivated” management mechanism to enable the undergraduate teaching full of values, including raising the course values by creating a number of reputed and fruitful courses, improving the teaching values by providing more professional support and services to the teacher’s development according to the teacher’s demands for their individualized and professional development as well as talent cultivation. Afterwards each teacher will have an e-teaching portfolio to help them reflect on teaching. Teaching will be considered as the first assessment reference to enhance the values. In terms of the teacher’s appointment, assessment and promotion etc., the talent cultivation will be deemed as the first assessment standard; for the colleges and departments, KPI (key performance indicators) assessment will be adopted. Talent cultivation will be put in the priority, accounting for 60% in assessment (40% for undergraduate cultivation and 20% for graduate cultivation). In addition, the school will also adopt the incentive mechanism for teachers by investing more than RMB 10 million annually to reward teachers at different levels. Those who have made outstanding contributions to the undergraduate teaching will be awarded a maximum of RMB 1 million.

    It is also known that Southeast University will invest about RMB 500 million for undergraduate talent cultivation within two years from now on so as to create an environment and provide conditions commensurate with the objectives of cultivating leading talents and make achievements commensurate with the first-class undergraduate education. We will strive to create two “100-1000-10,000” objectives, namely the “100-1000-10,000” teaching brand program (100 national outstanding textbooks, 1,000 “valuable lessons” and 10,000 high-quality practice teaching projects) and the “100-1000-10,000 Innovation Program (300 undergraduates to be awarded international competition prizes, 3,000 undergraduates to be awarded national and provincial competition prizes, 30,000 undergraduates to be awarded school-level competition prizes).