With the light foot steps of the New Year, we bid farewell to an unforgettable 2007 and welcome a promising 2008. On this special occasion, we together recall and are thankful for the past year and look forward to a bright future. I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the University, to extend New Year's greetings and best wishes to Tsinghua students, faculty, staff, alumni, and those who have supported the development of Tsinghua in past years.
Through the efforts of students, faculty, and staff, and with the help of those who support us, Tsinghua University has achieved new progress in its work and made great achievements in the past year. Tsinghua passed with a good performance the Ministry of Education’s undergraduate teaching evaluation, vividly demonstrating Tsinghua’s motto “Self Discipline and Social Commitment”, displaying Tsinghua students academic spirit for “Rigor, Diligence, Veracity, and Creativity”, and showing the capacity of Tsinghua faculty for rigorous teaching and research.
It has been under the guidance of Tsinghua’s continuing pursuit of excellence and its inspiring motto--“Actions Speak Louder Than Words” that we have achieved good results this year in teaching and research on our road to becoming a world-class university. This is the first time China has established First Category Key Disciplines. Tsinghua University was evaluated as having 22 First Category National Key Disciplines, ranking first nationwide. Three faculty were honored with the “Renowned Teacher of the Nation” award and ten faculty named as “Renowned Teacher of Beijing”. Nineteen courses at Tsinghua were evaluated as national elite courses and twelve as elite courses of Beijing. Eleven Ph.D. papers were evaluated as outstanding Ph.D. papers of the nation. Overall, Tsinghua’s total number of renowned teachers, elite courses and outstanding Ph.D. papers all rank first among China’s universities. In addition, sixteen research achievements won national science and technology awards. Meanwhile, Tsinghua continues to rank first among Chinese universities for its scientific fund, for the number of research papers cited, according to SCI, for the number of papers collected by EI and ISTP, and for the number of patents granted. Two faculty were elected new members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one faculty member was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Tsinghua continues to have the largest number of academicians of any college or university in China. For the first time, Tsinghua conferred degrees on foreign students in a foreign country and held its first “Tsinghua Week” in a foreign country at K.U.Leuven. The number of foreign graduate students recruited to Tsinghua equaled that of foreign undergraduate students for the first time. Tsinghua also improved its support and services for students, faculty and staff.
Looking back, we can take great satisfaction in our achievements. Looking to the future, we must not forget the heavy responsibilities we shoulder. The New Year promises hope and also brings opportunities and challenges. In 2008, we will continue to strive toward our goals of building Tsinghua into a world-class university according to our development plan. We will take it as our basic task to cultivate talents with innovative spirits. We will encourage independent innovation so that we can contribute to the development of our country. We will pay particular attention to further enriching and enhancing our campus culture. And in the spirit of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I hope all faculty and students get more physical exercise to maintain good health and voluntarily contribute to the success of the Games.
As we welcome a prosperous 2008--let us, in the spirit of the scientific concept of development, devote ourselves to the goal of making Tsinghua a world-class university, be creative and work hard to give Tsinghua a great gift for its 100th anniversary in 2011, and contribute to the development of our Chinese nation and the world.
