The meeting for development strategy was recently held in the College of Engineering, where the college administration and representative teachers and staff sat together to discuss the development direction for the coming academic year. Academicians Lin Huang and Shiyi Chen also attended the meeting and offered their opinions.

      Dean Dongxiao Zhang firstly gave a work report of last year. He summarized the college’s latest advancement in terms of faculty recruitment, research funding, national and international reputation, student enrollment and technology transfer, and also the challenges the college currently faces including the fundraising for the planned new college building, the integration of disciplines, the undergraduate student enrollment etc. He invited the attendees to speak about their opinions and suggestions.

      The participants had a heated discussion subsequently, on topics covering international student recruitment, improving teaching skills of young lecturers, enhancing communications and collaborations among the teachers of the same department, and so on. After a thorough discussion, many common grounds were achieved, which would set the development direction of the college in the near future.

      In particular, as arranged by the university, the College of Engineering will receive the International Peer Review (IPR) by the end of the year 2014. To prepare for that, the college has started a self-appraisal process, reflecting on the college’s current status of academic programs, research interests, departments and centers, projects and funding, faculty recruitment, promotion and tenure, internalization, publication and patents, technology transfer and entrepreneurship, education globalization, fundraising, as well as making a SWOT analysis and action plans. The college deemed the IPR as an excellent opportunity to have a clear view of the college’s position and thus would help achieve better development of the college.