Since its founding in 1989, Kuang Yaming Honors School has always been implementing its model of education, by which the students are enrolled into groups according to key disciplines to build up their foundation in basic subjects throughout both their undergraduate and graduate studies. It has been trying to combine traditional advantages of China’s higher education with the reform and improvement of current higher education in the world. It has also been dedicated to exploring an innovative education mode for undergraduate education, general education, student technology innovation, cooperation with universities at home and abroad, political and ideological education of students and other aspects so as to help well-rounded and high-qualified students to stand out.

The school aims at cultivating students with good scientific foundation, humanistic quality, solid knowledge basis, strong creativity, adaptability and potential, so that it can adjust itself to the trend of mutual influence of different disciplines, deal with challenges of the new technological reforms and meet the calling of “facing modernization, the world and the future.”

Characteristics:

The school’s science division carries out enrollment by foundational disciplines of sciences. 

Students of lower grades have no specific major in order to receive a rigorous foundational education across the major disciplines.

The courses enjoy wide coverage including the latest development of the discipline.

The students may choose their majors and specialties through multiple steps of choice and therefore participate in the design of the structure of their own knowledge and ability.

Training in scientific research is regarded as important as the teaching of theory and practice courses. Students enjoy the freedom of choosing their research topics and supervisors.

Students of different disciplines share the same dormitories so as topromote their communication.

Students have greater possibilities to win scholarships and admission to graduate school.

The education method at Kuang Yaming Honors School is teaching by foundational sciences (including mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, computer science, biochemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, brain science and artificial intelligence) and applied humanities and social sciences (including economics and business, law, journalism; the enrollment suspended in 2013 due to disciplinary adjustment).

In the first year, students take general courses on a large platform of arts and sciences; in the second year, they take core courses by their modules (disciplinary bases); in the third year they take core courses in their specialties; and in the fourth year, they take elective courses and research training courses and complete their graduation theses. Some core courses can be substituted between modules (disciplinary bases). The school encourages students to take courses in a variety of disciplines in order to engage in interdisciplinary and borderline subject research. The school organizes its teaching and academic management in accordance with the principle of “multiple choices, gradual streaming, and consideration for all” and gradually leads students to focus on different related disciplines from their third year onwards. The school follows the university’s regulations in recommending students for graduate studies (with the exemption of entrance exams).A considerably higher ratio of such recommendation than other schools in the university was guarranted.

Over years of continuous educational innovation, the school has formed its own characteristics in cultivating innovative, talented students in basic sciences. We pays close attention to foundational education, to the construction of a solid knowledge base and to the early beginning of training in research. We hires either professors or associate professors to teach core courses and assigns outstanding scholars active in cutting-edge research, including academicians of China’s Academy of Science, doctoral supervisors, and outstanding young scientists, to teach students in the one-year-long research training. The school also actively broadens its methods of education by relying on the university’s national key disciplines to continuously explore and implement the cultivation of top-notch innovative scientists and engineers.