On October 9, Vice President Zhao Yutao inspected the English Department and the English for Education Department, conducting an in-depth research into the faculty construction and internationalization work of the School of Foreign Languages.
English Department Dean Wu Qinghong and English for Education Department Deputy Dean Ding Jian reported to Vice President Zhao the faculty construction and specialty features of their departments respectively. According to Wu, in recent years the Department of English has been ranked among Grade A specialties in Chinese Universities Rankings issued by the Chinese Academy of Management Science, but it has had a bottleneck in the recruitment of talents. For many reasons, no high-level talents like PhDs in English Major have been employed by the Department for quite a few years though some of our faculty members have obtained a PhD through further study at other universities. We have not replenished our faculty with new teachers for many years. There is a shortage of high-level teachers for business English though it has long been the feature of the English Major. According to Ding, English for Education has had a long history of schooling, but due to the policy adjustment of the University, the TESOL Major had been cancelled for several years before it was resumed. Nevertheless, no students have been graduated by now. English for Education is also confronted with the lack of high-level teachers and it is extremely difficult to recruit high-level talents for the major. After listening to the reports by Wu & Ding, Vice President gave his instructions to talent recruitment. According to him, in order to recruit high-level talents, we can sit back and wait but must free our mind to work out solutions for the job, take the initiative to find the talents, and go an extra mile to introduce a talent team comprising great masters. Efforts should be made to integrate research institutes and recruit great master-level talents flexibly. Vice President Zhao also gave instructions on specialty construction, pointing out that the construction of a good major consists in making effort to promote teaching, teaching materials construction and teaching reform at the same time. Wu also reported the internationalization of English Department, introducing the admission and teaching of the “Sino-American Joint Program”. Here Deputy President Zhao encouraged the School of Foreign Languages to send more exchange students abroad and make the best of the foreign teachers available.
Representatives of English Department and English for Education Department, as well as the leadership of School attended the meeting. Vice President Zhao listened attentively to the suggestions and opinions of all conferees. Other conferees at the meeting include Human Resources Office Personnel Head Song Shuqin and International Office Foreign Experts Deputy Chief Zhi Liangze. (School of Foreign Languages)