On March 9th, the fifth ”A School With Teachers To Seek the Truth” conference of Zhejiang University was held in the International Conference Centre, at Zijingang Campus. YoulunXiong, member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Huazhong University of Science, ShupingChen, president of Guizhou University, DaiMingfan, vice president of China Academy of Engineering and president of Fourth Military Medical University, were invited to give a report about how to do a good job of training graduate students and make a better group of teachers. They communicated and discussed with about 200 graduate tutors who came from Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University of Technology and Hangzhou Normal University.
YoulunXiong took the example of teaching and cultivating graduate students himself, and described the responsibility of a tutor. He said teachers should play an important role of giving a correct direction, creating a good environment and handling the keys. Teachers should create a nice research environment for students, and guide them to work on the research issue and keep in touch with the advanced technology as soon as possible. Tutors should bring the initiative and creativity of graduate students into play, respect their interests, hobbies and infrastructure and guide them to carry out theoretical research and engineering practice in the fastest growing areas or the most urgent areas of the country. Communication with graduate students should be made frequently. Under the premise of academic equality and democracy, tutors and graduate students should discuss, debate, and form a tight research group. Graduate students should be stimulated to think about the academic issues and encouraged to climb to the summit of science
ShupingChen described the epistemology and methodology in four aspects of graduate education, i.e. “love”, “understand”, “excellent” and “cooperation”. He said, “love” is to love students, profession and career, and to have a big heart, passion, diligence and patience; “understand” is to understand the profession, the law, the students, and the times, and to guarantee students receive trains that meet the requirements of degree; “excellent” is to have excellent knowledge, character and methods, and to attract, nurture and cultivate students; “cooperation” is to cooperate with others and offer a comprehensive train to students. ShupingChen said that a good teacher should follow the three steps, i.e. “teach”, “influence” and “cultivate”, and do a good job in the systematic work of graduate education. Tutors should teach students according to their aptitude, guide them to choose the right issues and control them strictly. Tutors should pay attention to the innovation and its value or significance of the research, get students be mentally prepared for the difficulties, and enable them to overcome the difficulties one by one.
DaimingFan addressed on the theme of “Quality Strategy and School Construction”, introduced implementation of quality strategy of the Fourth Military Medical University, and successful experience of 18 strategic projects such as how to build a high quality of seminars, courses, papers, results, and management. He said that the training of graduate student was not a single, but comprehensive, having a great relationship with the management and construction of a school. A university is not only the transfer of civilization, but also a place where civilization is created and the elites are cultivated. So we must have the awareness and ability to meet our national strategies and follow the quality development way. It is necessary to ensure the coordinated development of teaching, medical, research, management, culture, personnel, logistics support and other aspects at the same time in the implementation the quality strategy.
DaimingFan stressed the importance of the teamwork. He said that wild geese could not fly high without a good group leader. It is necessary to select the right leader and organize the team properly. As an academic leader, one should not only develop the strategic ideas to promote each other, but also build academic peak for each individual of the team. We should rely on team spirit to achieve the success of big businesses.
ZichenChen, deputy secretary of Party committee of Zhejiang University, and MaodeLai, vice president presided over the meeting. ZichenChen said, to build an “innovative country”, technology is the core, talent is the key, and education is the foundation. The core issue of graduate education is to improve the quality of education, while teacher team building is the key. He hoped that on this platform, tutors could clearly understand their roles, responsibilities and methods, and improve the level of training to achieve the development of teacher group by leaps and bounds.
The meeting also gave a brief introduction of “the Basic Idea of Tutor Selection System Reform”.