SJTU Attended Signing Ceremony of “Hefei Statement”

During October 10-11, C9 Annual Presidents Meeting on Building World Class Universities was held in Hefei. Present at the opening ceremony were leaders from National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Council Degree Office, the relevant departments of the Ministry of Education, Bureau of Frontier Sciences and Education Chinese Academy of Sciences and Anhui Education Department. Leaders of C9, Go8, AUU and LERU Universities, as well as Presidents of MIT and three universities in Hong Kong, attended the meeting. President Zhang Jie led the SJTU delegation and made two reports at the meeting. "Heifei Statement," which illustrates the main characteristics and mission of modern research university, was signed at the conference. Participating parties will work together to promote the worldwide development of research universities, as well as the contribution of university to the society.

The theme of the seminar was "Facing changing world: the deeds and responsibilities of leading research universities." President Zhang Jie, on behalf of SJTU, delivered a report titled "Incentive system-the choice of university reform."

The meeting of China Association of University Presidents centered its discussion on the topic of "Teaching and learning in the era of information." In the speech, President Zhang Jie recalled the development of the association and pointed out that this process was a precious history in the development of Chinese higher education.

The Series Seminar on Building World Class Universities was co-established in 2003 by C9 universities of the 985 Project (i.e. Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Nanjing University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University and China University of Science and Technology). Participants discuss various issues, share their experiences and work on inter-school cooperation in order to promote the development of leading universities in China. The first session of the series seminar was held in 2003 at Tsinghua University and SJTU hosted the conference in 2004. The seminar takes place annually and schools take turns to host it.