Hunan Normal University Profile

Hunan Normal University, founded in 1938, is located in Changsha, a famous city with a long history and rich culture. It is among the national “211 Project” key universities and is rated as an excellent university in terms of undergraduate teaching by the Ministry of Education. It has 5 campuses covering a total area of 168 hectares with over 1,000,000 square meters of floor space. Its main campus, at the foot of Yuelu Mountain, with the Xiangjiang River to the east and green trees all around, has been honored as one of the 400 national models ofafforestation.

At present, the university has 24 colleges and 3 departments, offering undergraduate and graduate programs covering 12 major disciplines such as philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, technology, agriculture, medicine, management and art. The university has obtained 6 national key disciplines listed in the 11th Five-year Plan including Development Biology, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Historyamong others, 9 key disciplines such as Ethics subsidized by the 211 Project, 22 provincial key disciplines during the 12th Five-year Plan like Biology and Philosophy and 3 other advantageous provincial key disciplines such as Philosophy, Biology and Physics. It offers 18 Postdoctoral research centers, 17 Doctoral programs of first-level disciplines, 33 Masters’ programs of first-level disciplines, 18 professional master programsas well as 85 undergraduate majors. The university boasts 2 ministerial research bases of social sciences. One is the Center for Moral Studies, which is a key research base of humanities and social science under the Ministry of Education. The other is the Key Research Center of Sports Social Science under the State General Administration of Sports. It owns 2 provincial 2011 Collaborative Innovation Centers, namely, Biological Development Engineering and New Product Development, and Socialist Moral Culture with Chinese Characteristics. It also has 14 national bases or centers of professional training and scientific research, in fields such as the Chinese Language and Literature, History, Life Science and Technology, Culture and Quality-oriented Education of University Students, Basic Courses Research,National Outstanding Lawyer Training, and National Excellent Doctor Training, to name but a few.The Petrochemical Material and Resources Fine Utilization Laboratory and the laboratories of Proteomics and Developmental Biology, Microbial Molecular Biology are co-established by the Hunan Province and the Ministry of Education as the state key laboratory cultivation bases. The 4 laboratories of Protein Chemistry and Fish Developmental Biology, Chemical Biology and Traditional Chinese Medicine Analysis, Low-dimensional Quantum Structure and Regulation, High Performance Computing and Random Information Processing are included as key laboratories by the Ministry of Education. There are 6 provincial key laboratories including the Ministerial Engineering Research Center of Polyploid Fish Breeding and Breeding Technology, the Physical Fitness and Sports Rehabilitation Center; 2 provincial engineering laboratories of Polypeptide Drugs as well as others, 5 laboratories such as Dongting Lake Basin Resource Utilization and Environmental Changes are selected as provincial key laboratories, 4 laboratories like Solar LED Display and Lighting Technology Development are listed among demonstration bases of the cooperation of producing, teaching and research in Hunan colleges and universities. The university also owns 6 provincial social science research bases such as the Citizen Moral Construction Research Base, 5 provincial philosophy and social sciences key research bases like the County Development Research Center, 9 national specialty discipline construction points, 4 national personnel training mode innovation experimental areas, 10 state-level elite curricula, 9 state-level high quality resource sharing lessons, 4 China university public video lessons, 3 national bilingual teaching demonstration courses, 9 national teaching achievement prizes, and 2 national experimental teaching demonstration centers. The university has 2 national college student off-campus internship education bases, which was among the first to be included in the "National College Student Innovative Experiment Plan" .

The university faculty consists of over 1,700 teachers, including an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science, 2 members of the Discipline Appraisal Group of the State Council, 4 Yangtze Scholarship Laureate Professors, 4 National Teaching Groups, 2 research groups under the Development Plan of Yangtze Scholarship Professors and Innovation Team by the Ministry of Education, 7 teachers listed among the National Talents Project, 80 professors enjoying special government allowances, 7 young and mid-aged experts who have been awarded the title of National Expert with Remarkable Contributions, 4 winners of the National Natural Sciences Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 3 National Outstanding Teachers, 31 grant-winners of the Ministerial New Century Talents Support Program, 12 Hunan Provincial Furong Scholarship Laureate Professors, 5 experts among the 100 Hunan Talent Program, 71 professors included in the Hunan New Century 121 Talents Project, and 32 discipline leaders of institutions of higher learning in Hunan Province.

The university has set up partnerships with 140 universities or educational institutions from 36 countries and regions to carry out the personnel exchanges, and teaching and scientific research cooperation. The university has co-established two Confucius Institutes abroad with Kazan Federal University in Russia and Wonkwang University in South Korea respectively. The university library houses more than 3.75 million books, among which about 200,000 are thread-bound ancient books, and subscribes to over 80 bibliographic databases, and over 3,000 newspapers and magazines published in Chinese and other languages. In addition, the university runs a publishing house, and published 12 publicly-distributed academic periodicals, 5 of which are national core Chinese periodicals.

Since its founding, the university has successively trained over 300,000 students of various types for the country, and a large number of international students and students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Its alumni spread all over the world. Now at the university, over 20,000 fulltime undergraduates, 9,000 graduates and over 1,000 international students are studying. The university has developed an educational pattern featuring diversified training forms and levels.

Looking into the future, Hunan Normal University will carry forward its fine tradition of “being humane, caring, excellent and industrious” as well as its endeavor to serve the whole nation and even the world based on its achievements in the Hunan Province. At the same time, the university will continue to enhance the academic level of all its disciplines, strengthen the teacher training as its distinguishing feature, and strive to establish itself as a first-rate university at home and an influential one in the world.      (2015.5)