I.Organization

The First smart College, which is subordinate to College of Tourism and Service Management, started operating and recruiting in September 2019 as a pilot unit of smart College of Nankai University. The 2020 school-year witnesses the second batch of enrollment into the College.

The College currently has 12 tutors and 94 students, and will continue to enroll 100 new students in 2020. Meanwhile, it allows the willing students in the first batch to remain in the College after the end of training session, restricting the total number of students to 120.

The College limits the tutor-student ratio to 1:10, where students will be randomly divided into 10 groups with one tutor for each group.

Through a one-year training session, the College implements an operation mode of “overall + group cultivation” with “12 tutors guiding 100 students and 1 tutor for 10 students”.

II.Features

The core feature of the First smart College is the promotion of international vision and the cultivation of cross-cultural ability. With this feature, the operation of the College has been exploring the construction of teacher-student community, and promoting interaction and cooperation between teachers and students, or among students. The orientation, training objectives, training programs and activities of the First smart College are as follows:

1. College orientation

Demonstrate “dual-college” training mode of cultivating interdisciplinary talents;

Become a representative organization of Nankai University to develop students’ international and cross-cultural abilities.

2. Training objectives

To build an interdisciplinary and cross-faculty training system of “Three Comprehensive Education” within the College as a unit;

To achieve the training objectives of “eliminating confusion, increasing ability, establishing public competence and making contributions” by means of “motivating students and mobilizing teachers”; 

To provide a new platform for teacher-student communication and help all students grow up into talents, where the education tradition of NKU is set as starting point and the needs of students as orientation, and where with experts’ suggestions, teachers and students collaborate and share smart to eliminate confusions; 

To form a well coordinated online and offline teacher-student community, composed of thematic lectures, academic planning, service-learning and integrated with experts and tutors’ instructions and peer-to-peer mutual assistance, with academic guidance as its core.

3. Training plan

Underpinned by the information digital technology and adopting; The operation method with online classes, online courses, offline tutoring, and offline activities, the College has implemented an education mode with networked organizations, substantive activities and intelligent learning, which gives full play to the “contact function” of smart Platform and improves efficiency. 

The details are as follows: 

Online classes: Composed of teachers and students, it promotes the interactions between them and the construction of teacher-student community through interactions between teachers and students, among teachers, or among students;

Offline tutoring: Including book clubs, teacher-student community activities,face-to-face learning, tutoring, peer communication;

Offline activities: Including monthly lectures, literary appreciation, cross-cultural exchanges, and service-learning practices. Offline activities are divided into College-level thematic activities, organized once a month, and group-level activities, organized randomly by groups.

4. Features of the event

Through carefully designing online courses and offline lectures, holding a variety of activities such as literary and artistic appreciation, cultural exchanges, and service-learning practices, the College has inspired students with outcomes and reflections after study, so as to achieve the goal of self-remodeling through the integration of arts and sciences.

III.Tutoring team(ranked in order of last name, with no order of priority)

Du Ping — female, Ph.D in Sociology, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), is a lecturer in Department of Social Work and Social Policy, Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University. She has been awarded the CUHK Young Scholars Dissertation Award. She focuses on gender research, urban-rural migration, intimacy and social organization, and has published a monograph, Male Workers, Female Workers: The Contemporary Chinese Rural Migrant Workers’ Gender, Family and Migration.

Ji Fang — female, Master’s degree in Economics, is currently the Vice Secretary and Deputy Dean of School of Finance, lecturer, state consultant psychologist grade 2, and vocational instructor grade 2. She has won the title of National College Counselor of the Year, Top 10 College Counselor in Tianjin municipality and Nankai University. She has participated in a number special courses of ideological and political theory organized by Ministry of Education or Tianjin Municipality and has presided over several courses of ideological and political theory at school level. Her undergraduate courses include general elective course of Career Planning for College Students and major elective course of Financial Market and Career Planning.

Li Chuanyong — female, born in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, University of Tasmania, Australia. She is currently the Director of Department of Student Affairs of Nankai University. Her Research directions include Biomedical Information Processing and Physics Education Research. In recent years, she has actively promoted student-centered undergraduate education. Learning from international advanced educational concepts, she has designed and implemented a new model of quality education based on physics academic competition, and has won over 30 teaching related awards, in which the Second Prize of the 2018 National Teaching Achievement in Higher Education was award to her presided research program, Research and Practice on the New Model of Connecting Middle School to College Physics Comprehensive Quality Education.

Li Na — female, Master of Economics from Institute of International Economics, School of Economics, Nankai University, is currently the Vice Secretary and Deputy Dean of Business School. She was nominated for the National College Counselor of the Year, and awarded the Outstanding College Counselor in Tianjin Municipality and Outstanding Ideological and Political Worker in Tianjin Municipal Education System. She has presided over and completed 2 Excellent programs (Outstanding Programs) of College Counselor Work by the Ministry of Education and Tianjin Municipality; has presided over 1 special project of China Association of Higher Education; has presided over (and participated) 2 key research projects of Tianjin Municipal Education System and published A bilingual introduction of 100 year history of Nankai university.

Li Xia — female, Ph.D., is the Deputy Dean of College of Foreign Languages, Nankai University, Associate Professor, head of Nankai Effective Teaching (NKET) Series Courses. She has been awarded “Outstanding Teacher” and “Attractive Course” of Nankai University. Her main research directions include Curriculum Design and Teaching Implementation of Higher Education, as well as Cross-cultural communication teaching. She is also the lecturer of the National excellent online open course - “the Bible and European Civilization”, leader of Tianjin Municipal excellent teaching team - “International teaching team for talent training”. She has won the first prize of 7th and 8th Tianjin Teaching Achievements, as well as the first prize of the 10th Basic Teaching Skills Competition (English) for Young College Teachers in Tianjin.

Li Yuelin — female, Ph.D. of School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, USA, is currently the Director of Office of International Affairs, Nankai University, and Chair of the Department of Information Resources Management, professor and Doctoral Supervisor. She is selected into 2015 first Chang Jiang Scholars Program-Young Scholar Program, 2015 China’s Most Influential Young Scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as Program for New Century Excellent Talents of the Ministry of Education in 2013. Her main Research directions include: Information Behavior, Interactive Information Retrieval and Information System Assessment. She has published a number of papers on top international academic journals and has received awards at home and abroad. Her academic research positions include member of the Advisory and Steering Committee of Library Science in the Ministry of Education, as well as associate editor of Information Processing & Management  (2019-present), etc.

Qiu Hanqin — female, Ph.D. of University of Strathclyde, UK, had been teaching at Hong Kong Polytechnic University for years and made great contributions to the innovation of tourism education and the reform of education and teaching at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She returned to Nankai University in 2018 and is currently the Dean of the School of Tourism and Service Management and the Director of the Research and Development Center of Digital Teaching of Nankai University. She is also a member of the 3rd Academic Committee of China Tourism Academy. She has published nearly 80 periodical papers on international mainstream journals. Since 2015, she has been editor-in-chief of Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism. She was the lead guest editor of International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and the theme of China Hospitality and Tourism Development in Journal of Vacation Marketing, as well as regional editor of International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Qiu Xiaohang — Ph.D., Professor, Director of Nankai University’s National Center for Experimental Chemistry Education, winner of Baosteel Outstanding Teacher Award, Nankai University Outstanding Teacher Award, Nankai University Award of Attractive Courses. Long engaged in undergraduate teaching, Qiu is the lecturer of General Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Basic Inorganic Chemistry Experiments, Chemistry Changed the World and other courses. Qiu has undertaken a number of teaching reform projects at all levels, and has won 2 first prize of Tianjin Municipal Teaching Achievement as main contributor.

Wang Zhaojun — male, Executive Dean of School of Statistics and Data Science, Nankai University, Secretary of Party General Branch, Professor, Distinguished Professor of Chang Jiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education, member of the Discipline Review Group of Statistics in the Academic Degree Commission of the State Council, member of the National Statistics Expert Advisory Committee, vice chairman of Chinese Association for Applied Statistics, vice president of the China Institute of Industrial Statistics Teaching, as well as chairman of the Tianjin Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He has received special allowance from State Council, been selected guiding tutor of National Outstanding Doctoral Dissertations, and awarded the first prize of Tianjin Natural Science Award.

Yu Xinzhong — male, born in Lin’an, Zhejiang Province, Ph.D. in History, Nankai University, postdoctoral degree, Kyoto University, Japan. He is “Talent Professor” and doctoral supervisor at Nankai University’s Faculty of History and Center for Social History Research of China. He also takes the positions of deputy dean of the Faculty of History and vice chairman and secretary general of Chinese Society of Social History. He is selected among the Outstanding Talents in the New Century of Ministry of Education, Tianjin “131” Innovative Talents Cultivation Project (first class), and the leader of first Tianjin Municipal 131 Talents Innovation Team. He has received the award of the first Chang Jiang Young Scholars Program of Ministry of Education and enrolled into the National Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand Talents Project, receiving special allowance from State Council. He is mainly engaged in researches on History of Medicine, Society and Culture and Social History of Ming and Qing Dynasties. He has published 11 monographs, compilations, translations, etc. and more than 90 papers, which has received awards at all levels.

Zhang Jing — female, born in Yanling County, Henan Province, received Ph.D. in Literature from Nanjing University. He is currently Professor and Master’s tutor at Nankai University’s School of Literature, and director of Institute of Ancient Chinese Culture, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, School of Literature. He also serves as member of the Chinese Chanting Society, member of the Ci Research Institute of China, member of Tianjin Municipal Society of Literature, member of Academic Committee of Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture Translation and Communication Project, visiting scholar of University of London, visiting scholar of the University of British Columbia in Canada, promoter of “reading in all our people to build Tianjin of avid readers”, as well as lecturer of courses on classical Chinese poetry teaching on “Xuexi Qiangguo” (Learn more to make our country stronger) learning platform.

Zhang Weigang — male, Ph.D., Professor, Institute of Modern Optics, College of Electronic Information and Optical Engineering, Nankai University. He is the winner of Nankai University’s first Outstanding Contribution Award in Education and Teaching, leader of Tianjin Municipal level teaching team - “Teaching Team of Scientific Literacy and Scientific Research Methods”. He has been committed to the research and teaching of electro-optic systems and sensor technology, and has achieved many innovative research outcomes in model construction, structural design, performance analysis, device development, application development and other aspects, some of which are international pioneers. He has published more than 270 papers and more than 10 monographs and teaching materials. He has undertaken a number of key research subjects at all levels and won a number of teaching achievement awards. His social positions include the Standing Editorial Board Member of Chinese Journal of Lasers and the ad hoc reviewer of Chinese Physics Letters, etc.