Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

FOURTEEN of the world’s top universities’ leaders from seven countries and regions including the U.S., the U.K., South Korea, Singapore, Australia, the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong gave constructive suggestions to realize the strategic objectives of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) at the International Advisory Council (IAC) Meeting that ended yesterday.

During the two-day meeting, the members of the IAC listened to a report on the current situation and the outlook of the construction and development of the university, visited and studied its environment and facilities, and explored the strategic development of SUSTech to find ways of dealing with the challenges that the university is currently facing, such as the comprehensive development and internationalization process of SUSTech.

In the congratulatory letter to the founding of the IAC, Shenzhen Mayor Chen Rugui hopes the IAC will play a bigger role in enhancing international cooperation and trailblazing a new path for the reform and innovation of China’s higher education.

Chen also hopes that university leaders will support SUSTech’s development with their solid experience in running world-class universities and their high prestige and influence in the global higher education sector.

“It is very important for a top university, especially in a very important city like Shenzhen, to have a very top-notch medical school. Such a medical school should be positioned for the future. Shenzhen is a city of innovation and the medical school should be a model for China, even for the world,” said Eng Chye Tan, president designate of the National University of Singapore.

Tan added that the future for SUSTech is very bright as it ventures in this very challenging and ambitious strategy to build a world-class medical school for the future.

Samuel L. Stanley Jr., president of Stony Brook University in New York, was impressed with the progress that SUSTech had made in the past years after listening to the report of the university.

“It was a very difficult thing for SUSTech to do, to go from nothing to being one of the pre-eminent universities that is able to attract first-class faculty and students. There is still much to be done to be among the greatest universities in the world. The support from the city and the province as well is critical in making that happen. The doctorate and postgraduate programs will be very important for the university,” said Dr. Stanley.

Henry T. Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, thought it was remarkable that SUSTech had made such remarkable progress in such a short five to six year period. Yang and his members were impressed with the quality of the students in their meeting Monday. Yang proposed three focused suggestions, including the university to do its best to obtain the approval to confer graduate degrees, especially the Ph.D. program, to maintain the per capita funding to continue its momentum of a rapid rise to become a world-class university, and to build a medical school for a city with a population of around 20 million.

University of East Anglia had programs in partnership with SUSTech including joint Ph.D. training, and its president David Richardson, in his third visit to the city, said the quality students and quality staff is the focus of SUSTech as it tries to be one of the top universities in the world. Richardson suggested that SUSTech “maintain strong focus on quality” to cultivate students during the most creative, innovative and entrepreneurial state of their lives.

“SUSTech’s partnership with local enterprises in Shenzhen can put in place infrastructure which will be really helpful in developing entrepreneurial spirit in students,” said Richardson.

David Leebron, president of Rice University, thinks SUSTech is among the most successful and promising young universities anywhere in the world today.

The essential ingredients for its growth are the strong support from the government to carry on its vision, the strong leadership of the university and the high standard of students and faculty the university has been unwilling to compromise.

Peter Hoj, president of The University of Queensland, was impressed with what had happened in Shenzhen in the last decades.

“Shenzhen has a huge opportunity to have a world-class university by building SUSTech to share the vision about what the city wants to achieve. We will give expertise to SUSTech, and we will learn from each other,” said Hoj.

SUSTech was founded in 2011 with a mission to reform and spur development with innovation. It stands out with distinctive Chinese characteristics in the higher education sector, by using its unique mode to cultivate top-notch innovative talents to tackle the challenges China’s talent development faces.

Over the past few years, the university has grown spectacularly in both reputation and global impact.

On Aug. 31, 2017, the U.K.-based Nature Index Publishing Group announced their Nature Index 2017 Tables which showed SUSTech’s 2017 Weighted Fractional Count (based on the percentage of authors to have published articles) was 33.26 for the period between April 2016 and March 2017, placing it in 31st position in the Nature Index list of Chinese mainland universities. It is a considerable improvement compared to three years ago when it was ranked 55th, and it’s the first time that SUSTech has been included in the top 500 universities in the world.

By September 2017, over 300 faculty members were hired by SUSTech. Among the faculty body are 18 academicians and fellows of academies, 43 recipients of the Thousand Talents Program, 12 Changjiang Scholars, 14 recipients of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 61 recipients of the Thousand Young Talents Program. These high-level, nationally endorsed experts represent more than half of the faculty.

Currently there are 14 departments, which offer 22 majors. Among them, six new majors were approved by the provincial government in 2016, making SUSTech the fastest-growing university in the province.