Grasping the New Normal,

Composing the New Chapter

By Li Baodu, Party Secretary of CPC QAU Committee, and Song Xiyun, President of QAU

Along with the natural rhythm of spring, all things begin to glow with new luster. On this New Year occasion, on behalf of the School Party Committee and Administration, we would like to extend festival greetings and New Year blessings to all staff and students, retired veteran comrades, the broad masses of alumni both at home and abroad and those personages of various circles of society who have shown long-term concern and support to the school’s career development.

2015 is the final year of the "12th Five Year Plan" and also the year to plan and arrange for the "13th Five Year Plan". Over the past year, the school has been adhering to the concept of strengthening morality education and connotative development, and continuing to deepen the reform and comprehensively promote the modernization of the governance system and the construction of application-oriented high-level school with distinctive features. With the pioneering spirit and collaborative innovation, the undertakings of the university have witnessed great progress, which has made a good beginning and laid a solid foundation for the 13th Five Year Plan.

In this year, being closely centered on talents cultivation, we gave great impetus to the construction of Elite School Project and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education. Students’ innovation consciousness and practical ability have thus been continuously upgraded and the quality of talents developing has seen a new progress. Two new undergraduate programs have been added, making the number of the university’s bachelor's degree programs reach 77. The number of curriculum construction programs approved by the university has amounted to 358, the teaching and research programs being 184, textbook construction programs being 54 and specimen resources programs being 21. The number of students' scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship programs approved by the university has reached 456, including 83 national-level programs. In terms with the scientific and technological innovation contest, the university has witnessed 48 items of national-level awards, among which there was a First Prize in the National "Challenge Cup". The formal employment rate of graduates reached 94.8 percent. A wide array of excellent graduates such as Guo Song, Guo Ting-ting etc. who are nationally outstanding have emerged.

In this year, we actively responded to the national innovation-driven development strategy by being established in basic and applied research, adhering to academic innovation and continuing to implement the “Four Grand Projects” of discipline construction(proposed by State Statistics Bureau in 2010), all of which have further enhanced the comprehensive support for the modernization of national and regional agriculture. In the whole year, the university had 352 items of research projects approved, among which there are 40 National Natural Science Foundation programs, ranking the sixth among the Shandong provincial universities and the 195th among all the universities of China. Besides, we also witnessed 42 items of various awards for scientific research, 558 papers indexed by the three retrieval systems (SCI, EI and ISTP), 5 new varieties having passed national and provincial approval, 162 items of national-level computer software copyright and 140 authorized patents for invention. One Provincial-level Engineering Research Center and two Qingdao-based Science and Technology Innovation Platform were newly established. In the field of basic research, QAU has successfully cloned out the major gene named GmHs1-1 that controls the hard-seededness of soybean coat, with the paper having been published in the top international-level academic journal named Nature Genetics, whose impact factor reaches up to 33.463. What’s more, a breakthrough progress has been obtained in the areas of palindromic structure function, rice blast fungus transcription factor binding regulation etc. and the research achievements have been successively published in the journals such as Molecular Cell, Nucleic Acids Research and Scientific Report. In terms of applied research, the national-level new veterinary drug titled Meloxicam and its injecta have been approved by the national Ministry of Agriculture; more than 10 kinds of machineries such as the small-region precise planting and harvesting equipment for crop varieties, joint operations equipment for peanut planting, ginseng harvesting machine etc. are leading within the country. The autonomously-bred new variety of wheat, Qingmai VI, an excellent wheat variety suitable for dry land, the new dwarf apple variety named "Fu Yan" etc. have all seen new records in yield per mu, a Chinese land area unit with 1 mu being equal to 0.067 hectare.

In this year, directed by the idea of developing agriculture by relying on science and education and serving regional socioeconomic development, we successively signed strategic cooperation agreements with six counties/districts and six enterprises. QAU has always been adhering to the ideology of collaborative innovation and we signed 76 cooperative projects with the local governments or companies, set up 30 new regional research and development centers and various service bases and expert workstations. 12 new technologies and new varieties have been confirmed the dominant technology and varieties by the Shandong Provincial Agriculture Department and the Qingdao Agricultural Committee. 18 important scientific and technological achievements and over 60 practical technologies have been transferred and promoted.

In this year, we continued to implement the strategy of strengthening schools with talents by enhancing the intensity of high-level talents introduction, which has further optimized the educational background and learning-origin structure of teaching staff. In the whole year, 38 teachers were introduced to QAU, among whom there are 1 “Taishan Scholar Overseas Distinguished Expert”, 27 Doctoral degree holders, 6 teachers having associate senior professional title or above, 10 teachers with overseas study background and 9 teachers who have work experience in stations for post-doctoral research. 3 new "Taishan Scholar Distinguished Experts” and 1 “Young and Middle-aged Expert with Outstanding Contributions of Shandong Province” were added, and 2 academicians were flexibly introduced. Furthermore, the veterinary biological technology research team was selected into the first group of “Superior Discipline Talents Team Development Scheme for the Institutions of Higher Learning in Shandong Province”.

In this year, we continued to deepen the reform of university internal management system, and comprehensively promote the modernization of the governance system to further improve school conditions. "Statutes of Qingdao Agricultural University” has been approved by the Shandong Provincial Department of Education. The university has adjusted the institutional setup, integrated the department functions and straightened out the job responsibilities. The personnel and distribution systems have been reformed aiming at strengthening the constraint and incentives mechanism. The two engineering projects of Science and Technology Laboratory Building and Logistics Service Center Building were successfully completed and will be brought into service. The students’ dormitory buildings, dining halls and teaching buildings were repaired and renovated. We also actively raised funds to strengthen the construction of modern agricultural science and technology demonstration park. A total of 20.2 million RMB was invested to implement the construction of three provincial key disciplines and six teaching experiment centers. Besides, 13 laboratory renovation projects were completed, with equipments worth 499.7million RMB being purposed.

In this year, we adhered to the philosophy of running school openly to actively promote the internationalization of education. We signed 15 cooperation agreements with foreign universities and research institutions and carried out two research subjects in cooperation with the Rural Development Administration of Republic of Korea, and five talents introduction projects including a national-level project were approved. Besides, we actively promoted state-funded student exchange programs, 167 students being sent abroad to study and 191 overseas students being recruited to study at QAU.

In the same year, we strengthened the leading and safeguarding function of party building and the ideological and political work, and solidly carried out the educational campaign of “Three Stricts and Three Earnests” (to be specific, be strict in self-development, the exercise of power, and self-discipline, and to be earnest in making plans, opening up new undertakings, and upholding personal integrity) among the CPC party members and cadres of the university. The performance evaluation of the department-chief-level leading teams and the leading cadres in the past term was conducted, which further strengthened the construction of the contingent of cadres. The construction for CPC work style and building a clean government was practically strengthened, and the anti-corruption punishment and prevention system was established and improved, both of which have further enhanced CPC Party cadres’ sense of discipline, rules and responsibility.

Looking back, every step we have taken resonates powerfully; looking to the future, we deeply feel that we still have a long way to go.

Let us stand on the new starting point and grasp the new normal of the reform and development of higher education; let us work together hand in hand and win through innovation; let us continue with the past and open up the future; let us be enthusiastic and press on; let us compose a glorious new chapter of Qingdao Agricultural University!

Finally, we wish you all a Happy New Year. May good health, happiness and good luck be always with you.

December 31, 2015

Translated by Ding Shuting