Chongqing Normal University was founded in 1954 with a traceable history dating back to the Public Eastern Sichuan Normal University in 1906. It has three campuses, respectively located in the Chongqing University Town, Shapingba District and Beibei District with total land coverage of 2688 mu. The University is known as a national model green unit, a municipal civilized unit and a municipal garden-like unit, municipal forest campuses and municipal campuses of beauty. It is a public university approved by the Academic Degrees Committee under the State Council of China to confer bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctor’s degrees. Through over six decades’ construction, the University has formed a mode driven by two wheels, i.e. normal education and non-normal education, a “troika” comprising elementary education, vocational education and international Chinese education, and a pattern featured by coordinated development of “three plates”– cultural inheritance and innovation, policy-making consulting and public services, and technological problem solving and application conversion.
The University has three national bases, namely Chinese Education Base of the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs under the State Council, National Key Training Base of Vocational Education Teachers under the Ministry of Education, and National Teachers Training Base (Chongqing) for International Chinese Promotion. It is one of the first two “Model Bases of Sino-German (Chongqing) Cooperation on Vocational Education”, as well as a “special education base” of the Ministry of Education and the National Development and Reform Commission. In addition, it also has Chongqing Vocational Education Assessment and Teacher Development Coordination and Innovation Center and several municipal model training bases, including regular middle school and primary school teachers training base, kindergarten teachers training base, special education teachers training base, vocational education teachers training base, wind music teachers training base, among others. Besides, some of the first ministry-university jointly constructed colleges are also established relying on the University. Such colleges include Chongqing Journalism College, Chongqing Tourism College, Chongqing College of Music, Chongqing Preschool Education College and Chongqing Special Education College.
The University has 17 schools, 1 independent secondary college, 1 doctor program of general discipline, 24 master programs of general disciplines, 72 full-time undergraduate education programs, and 14 municipal key general disciplines covering 11 subjects, including philosophy, law, economics, education, literature, science, and etc. On top of those, it also has 15 model construction projects, including national featured discipline construction station, national pilot unit of comprehensive discipline reform, national excellent teachers development reform project, national pilot development and reform project of excellent agricultural and forestry talents, national fine open video class, national teachers education fine resource sharing class, national teaching and scientific team construction project, and national teaching staff construction project, as well as 80 featured projects, including Chongqing featured discipline construction project, three-specialty program, programs of three-specialty disciplines, fine and bilingual courses, teaching team construction project, experimental teaching demonstration center, innovation and pilot test area of talent development mode, and etc.
In the University, there are over 26,000 full-time undergraduate students and above 3,600 master or doctor candidates. It has more than 1,600 full-time teachers, including above 280 teachers of intermediate and senior professional titles, 1 academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, 6 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 1 member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and 3 candidates for the New Century National Hundred Thousand-and-Ten Thousand Talents Project.
In its over six decades’ history, the University has produced and provided more than 160,000 graduates of diversified specialties to the society. Some of the graduates have become backbones in fields of education, economy, culture, technology and others. Among such graduates, the most outstanding representatives include Ma Zhiming – academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Chinese Mathematical Society, winner of Hua Luogeng Mathematics Prize and Chen Shengshen Prize for Mathematics, Hu Zhong – winner of the “Touching China Award” in 2011, and Cao Jin –“The Most Beautiful Rural Teacher”.
Following the trend of internationalization, the University has been persisting in open-up operation. It has established sound partnerships with education institutes in more than 30 countries and regions, including Russia, America, Australia and Britain for Sino-foreign joint development, cooperative research, mutual visits of teachers and students, or cooperation and exchange in other forms. It has established overseas education institutes, including Confucius Institute at Education Institute of Rwanda University in Rwanda, Confucius Institute at University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, Confucius Institute at Edge Hill Universityin UK, and Confucius Institute at Troy University in US, Widyakartika University Chinese Normal College in Indonesia. Also, the University facilitates its “CNU Foreign Students Education Program” to enroll students from all over the world, as a recipient of governmental scholarship, scholarship for Confucius institutes and mayoral scholarship from Chongqing People’s Government for foreign students.
