The intellectual wealth from Great China University, Kwang Hua and other universities and colleges laid a solid foundation for ECNU, while the transformation of departments in the early 1950s infused new effectiveness into ECNU. In March 1959, ECNU was officially recognized as one of the 16 key universities in China, and this status was reaffirmed in 1978.
Teacher training is one of the great features of ECNU, China’s leading normal university. ECNU began training junior middle school teachers already in 1952, and has taken on the role as a teacher-training university ever since its early days. Since the early 1980s, ECNU has recognized the importance of combining teacher training and academic research in its development, and has made great efforts in this field.
As the first normal university founded in the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, ECNU has kept teacher training as one of its main features since its establishment. The Ministry of Education's Training Center for Secondary School Principals located at ECNU is a unique base for the training of secondary school principals on China’s Mainland and for advanced studies for those in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. It enjoys the reputation of being the “Huangpu Military School” for secondary school principals.
decades of teaching and research practice, the university’s motto of “Seek Truth, Foster Originality, and Honor the Teaching Profession” has inspired generations of ECNU teachers and students to strive hard for the development of China’s basic education and the prosperity of the country. Now, ECNU is steadily and enthusiastically working towards its goal of establishing itself as an internationally renowned high-level research university, and will therefore play a more prominent role in China’s rise in the 21st century.
ECNU has also made enormous achievements in talent-training, scientific research, community service and international exchanges. In so doing, it has significantly contributed to the development of Chinese basic education and teacher training, and the advancement of economics, sciences and society, both locally and nationally. The development and transformation of the country and the modern international metropolis of Shanghai bring huge opportunities to the university for its progress. ECNU is steadily and enthusiastically working towards its goal of establishing itself as an internationally renowned high-level research university, with a number of first-class disciplines and a well coordinated discipline development.
At present, the university not only takes the lead when it comes to the country’s education of teachers, but also shows great influence in the country’s advancement of economics, sciences and social sciences through its academic achievements. The University has three faculties, 27 full-time schools, two colleges,8 advanced research institutes, a college of further education, and a national training center for secondary principals with 58 departments offering 80 undergraduate programs in humanities, education, science, engineering, economics, management, philosophy, psychology, law, history and art. Besides that, the University also offers 27 doctoral programs of the State Primary Disciplines, 38 master's programs of the State Primary Disciplines, one professional doctoral program, 19 professional master's programs and 25 post-doctoral mobile research stations.
ECNU boasts two State Key Labs, one National Engineering Research Center, one National Field Observation and Research Station, seven Key Labs or Engineering Centers, six Key Research Bases for Humanities and Social Sciences and one Base for Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Education, and one International Cooperation Laboratory of the Ministry of Education. It also has 10 Key Labs or Engineering Centers, seven Social Sciences Innovation Bases and Studios, and two university think-tanks for Shanghai Municipality. The university sponsors or supervises the publication of nearly 30 academic journals and periodicals. Its library collection has exceeded 4,620,000 volumes, and it also has 22 affiliated primary or secondary schools and two affiliated kindergartens.
Among the over 4,000 strong faculty, 1737 are professors and associate professors, including 11 academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences or Chinese Academy of Engineering. Currently, the number of full-time undergraduate students is 14,405 while that of graduate students is 15,771. There are also about 5,000 international students studying at ECNU.
ECNU attaches great importance to the internationalization of its development and enjoys a wide influence and an excellent reputation around the world. The university has established exchange and cooperative partnerships with more than 200 internationally renowned universities and academic institutions. ECNU is one of the Chinese universities that first began establishing Confucius Institutes with foreign universities and institutions. So far, the university has set up 9 Confucius Institutes around the world.
Being a university with an international perspective, ECNU attaches great importance to the internationalization of its development and has established strategic cooperative partnerships with many world-renowned universities from all over the world. In 2008, it set up the Study and Training Base for International Chinese Teachers under Hanban, the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. In 2011, the ground breaking of Shanghai New York University, a joint university established by ECNU and New York University in Shanghai, showed a new phase of ECNU’s internationalization plans.
