About Tianshui Normal University |
Tianshui Normal University is located in Tianshui city, a famous for long history and rich culture in China. Particularly for Chinese ancient culture such as, Fuxi culture, Qin dynasty culture and Maji Grottoes culture. Tianshui enjoys nice weather, rich agricultural products, and beautiful scenery. It has thriving commercial trade and convenient communication system. It’s one of the best places for people to live so it is also called a Miniature city on the south bank of Yangtze River in Gansu.
Tianshui Normal University was established in 1959. Since its founding over forty years ago, it has grown into a comprehensive university under the jurisdiction of Gansu Province. The University’s campus is over 33.4 hectare with a teaching staff of 660; among them are 428 full-time teachers. The student’s population numbers 12000 composed of 14 departments, 3 research institutes and 8 science and engineering specialties. With a collection of 480,000 volumes of books, the library has set up “ a branch station of CNKI Knowledge Network Service Station ”, and has opened a campus computer network, 6 computer classrooms and 2 multimedia language laboratories in the University.
Through more than forty years practice, the university has formed its own characteristics: be geared to the needs of the poor areas, train and bring up qualified teachers who are willing to stay and teach in their hometowns; be realistic to the rich cultural heritage, tap the depth of the local culture; stand facing the battle field of economic construction, supply the local countryside and enterprises with intelligence support to help them shake off poverty, build up fortune and develop the economy.
After struggling for decades, the university has made great achievements in many aspects. Many teachers have been awarded by the nation the title of “ National Exemplary Teacher”, 8 were awarded “Zeng Xianzi Education Fund Prize”; in 1998, the university took the first place in National Mathematical Modeling Competition. In 1999, the university was named and recognized as “Nation Advanced Unit of Spiritual Civilization Construction Work” by Central Committee of Spiritual Civilization Construction. In the same year, the office of the teaching affairs of the university was awarded the first prize of the nation by the Ministry of Education. Dozens of academic theses have been collected into SCI. The university has made over 30 agreements on the co-operative projects with industrial and mining enterprises and scientific research institutions. In resent years, the university has won 44 prizes in the show of the achievements in science, social science and teaching from the provincial and municipal governments, and has won 3 national patents. By the end of 1999, the university had produced more than 13000 qualified graduates for all kinds of fields in the whole province especially the southeast part, and has made great social benefits.
The future orientation of the university will be based on Tianshui, be geared to the needs of the undergraduate education as its main focus, consider the teacher-training education as its main focus, serve for the basic education, regional economical construction and social development, build the university into a talents training base, a scientific research base, an information communication base and an intelligence reserving base in southeast area of Gansu Province.
The goal of the university will be to try hard to build the university into a comprehensive university with teacher-training education as its main focus around the year of 2010.
