New Year's Greeting from the President

New Year's Greeting from the President

Reviewing a century of vicissitudes and a hundred years of sowing and reaping, we bid farewell to an unforgettable 2010 and welcome a promising New Year. We conclude the first hundred years of Tsinghua University and stride towards a new start. As the bells welcoming 2011 start to ring, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the University to extend New Year's greetings to Tsinghua students, members of the faculty and staff, our alumni, and those who have faithfully supported the development of the University in past years.

Tsinghua s evolution over the past century has been closely linked to China s development. Generations of Tsinghua graduates have become academic masters and pillars of the country and made important contributions to the development of China and world civilization. Especially in recent years, with the strong support of the nation, Tsinghua has dedicated itself to the goal of becoming a world-class university, and it continues to make progress in talent cultivation, research, faculty development, overseas cooperation, and social service.

In the past year, we held a university-level meeting to discuss our mission and strategy of talent cultivation in the coming 100 years. The Tsinghua Xuetang Education Plan has been inaugurated. A number of education and teaching reform measures have been implemented. Tsinghua has always been proud of its excellent students, and the quality of matriculants has continued to rise. Furthermore, the number of foreign students has increased. Currently, the number of the foreign graduate students ranks first among Chinese universities.

In 2010, Tsinghua opened the Institute for Global Change Studies, the Research Center for Public Health, the Institute of Modern International Relations, and the Tsinghua-MIT-CUHK Research Center for Theoretical Computer Science. The foundation of the Beijing Tsinghua Hospital was laid. Twelve disciplines underwent international evaluation.

Our research and development of the low density parity check technology for China s second unmanned lunar probe, Chang'e-2, was commended. China s first extremely deep underground laboratory, the deepest lab in the world covered by rocks, was opened and put into operation. The first clinical trial of the brain pacemaker , developed by Tsinghua, has succeeded.

Tsinghua students and teachers published many papers in top journals. Twenty-one research achievements at Tsinghua won National Science and Technology Awards, and two research achievements were selected for Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress awards at Chinese universities in 2010. Tsinghua also held a Tsinghua Week at Berkeley and a Tsinghua Week at Todai , as part of its continuous endeavors to extend its international influence.

Tsinghua has made great efforts in terms of faculty development. Thirty-eight Tsinghua faculty members recruited from overseas have been selected for the Thousand-Talent Project launched by the Chinese government. Nineteen faculty members were chosen in the Ministry of Education's Cheung Kong Scholars Award Plan last year, and the total number of such scholars from Tsinghua ranks first among Chinese universities.

P rofessor Shing-Tung Yau, director of the Tsinghua Mathematical Sciences Center, won the Wolf Prize. The Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians was held at Tsinghua. Several faculty members won prizes, including the HLHL Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress, the Qiushi award, and the top prize of the Baosteel Education Foundation Outstanding Teacher Award.

In 2010, Tsinghua engaged in various social service activities. It contributed to the Shanghai World Expo with its research achievements and art design. Tsinghua also provided support to the reconstruction of earthquake-stricken Yushu County in northwestern China's Qinghai Province. Tsinghua students, together with counterparts from Taiwan, went to Wenchuan to support education in the earthquake-hit areas.

Tsinghua has also been devoting itself to poverty alleviation activities. A total of 273 long distance learning centers were set up last year for training primary and secondary school teachers and grassroots cadres. The University also attaches great importance to energy saving and low carbon campus life.

Various measures have been taken to construct a green university. Tsinghua was selected as having one of the world's fourteen most beautiful college campuses by Forbes magazine.

Tsinghua will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011. We started the year for the centenary last April and have hosted a series of academic, cultural, and commonweal activities and celebrations. The construction of a number of new buildings, including the New Tsinghua Xuetang, a museum for university history, a concert hall, and a library for humanities and social sciences, is going well.

The centenary is a milestone in Tsinghua University s history. In the New Year, we will sum up the educational experience of the University in the past 100 years, continue our efforts in educational reform, devote ourselves to educating talent with innovative spirits, and dedicate ourselves to the goal of making Tsinghua a world-class university.

Dear teachers and students! The dawning of the New Year brings with it new horizons. Let us bear in mind the Tsinghua motto of "Self-discipline and Social Commitment", be creative and work hard to continue the development of Tsinghua University, and contribute to tertiary education and scientific development in China and the world, and to the progress of human civilization.