Northeast Normal University is an institution of higher learning under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education, being selected as one of the universities given priority in construction in the "211 Project". The university, located in Changchun city, Jilin province, occupies an area of 1,500,000 square meters, including 800,000 square meters of the main campus and 700,000 square meters of the new campus.
Northeast Normal University (NENU) is strengthened by scientific research through advancing the high-level and distinctive scientific researches. From 2006 to the end of 2013, NENU undertook 3,257 scientific research projects at or above provincial level with RMB 823 million funds in total. Among these projects, there are 92 humanity and social sciences projects including Marxism Theory Research and Construction Project, major projects supported by National Social Sciences Foundation, major projects and key programs in Philosophy and Social Sciences Research supported by the Ministry of Education, major projects for key research centers of Humanity and Social Sciences Research supported by the Ministry of Education, New Century Excellent Talents Supporting Program, National Qing-Dynasty History Editing Projects and major projects entrusted by the state ministries or national committees, and there are 117 natural science research projects covering national 863 Program and 973 Program, and major projects of the Ministry of Education as well as the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Since 2006, academic papers have amounted to over 5,000 CSSCI papers and 3,900 SCI papers. In November, 2013, as indicated by the Basic Scientific Index database, the total cited number of NENU’s ESI papers ranked 33rd among China's universities with average cited frequency per paper ranking 1st. Since 2001, humanity and social sciences of NENU have obtained 799 awards at or above provincial level, including 32 excellent achievement awards for national universities' humanities and social sciences research and 12 outstanding achievement awards for national education science; natural sciences of NENU have obtained 86 awards at or above provincial level, including 4 national awards.
Northeast Normal University (NENU), as a research-oriented and comprehensive normal university, has 11 kinds of disciplines and 42 level-1 disciplines covering philosophy, economics, laws, education, literature, history, sciences, engineering, agriculture, management and arts. Up to now, there are 22 level-1 disciplines offering doctoral degrees, and 3 level-2 disciplines offering doctoral degrees (excluding level-1 disciplines of doctoral degrees); 34 level-1 disciplines offering master's degrees and 11 level-2 disciplines offering master's degrees (excluding level-1 disciplines of master's degrees ), as well as professional doctoral degree of education and 18 professional master degrees.
At present, NENU has 8 top key level-1 disciplines of Jilin Provincial higher education—Marxist theory, education, world history, chemistry, biology, ecology, statistics, materials science and engineering; and 32 advantageous and distinctive key disciplines given priority for construction in Jilin Province. In terms of ESI disciplines ranking, NENU's chemistry, materials science, engineering and mathematics have greater international academic influence. In the domestic discipline evaluation, NENU's world history, Marxist theory, statistics, education, biology, ecology, foreign language and literature rank top among the same disciplines at national level.
Northeast Normal University (NENU) is staffed with diligent and creative faculty members of 1, 547 full-time teachers in total, including 487 professors, 593 associate professors, 298 doctoral supervisors on regular payroll, 6 honorary professors, 99 senior professors, 28 guest professors and 13 emeritus professors, as well as a large number of foreign professors teaching and lecturing in the university.
A batch of experts and scholars famous at home and abroad gather in NENU. Among them, there are academicians of the Third World Academy of Sciences, dual-appointed academicians and members of Discipline Evaluation Group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (13); 8 members of “Thousand Talents Program”, 6 distinguished professors of “Chang Jiang Scholars Program”, 4 visiting professors of “Chang Jiang Scholars Program”, 2 recipients of the National Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and 3 winners of National Young & Middle-aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions.
In recent years, NENU has actively explored and reformed the talents training mode in accordance with the goal positioning of talents training. In order to implement the strategy of “Strengthening NENU through Talents”, some measures are taken to stabilize, attract and train a batch of strategic scientists and young academic talents advanced at state level. NENU has actively introduced talents of higher level on one hand, and has focused on the in-service teachers training on the other hand, which promotes the teachers’ foreign exchanges, domestic visiting study and further academic study, thereby, the number of teachers for government funded overseas study has increased year by year, and the teachers’ academic level has been improved steadily.
Under the guidance of the concept of “respected education” in recent years, NENU has based its development on education and teaching, and explored and reformed the talents training mode in accordance with its goal positioning of talents training. In 2003, NENU began its education and teaching reform and embarked on a new round of undergraduate teaching reform in line with the talents training objective of “easy access, solid foundation, professional skills and more employment”. In 2005, NENU successfully passed the assessment of undergraduate teaching performance by the Ministry of Education and gained an excellent result. In 2007, to implement the national policy of free normal education, NENU adopted the talents training mode of “3+0.5+0.5+2” which integrated undergraduate study with postgraduate study and launched the “Educator Training Project”
In 2008, supported by the Project “Innovation Platform for Advantageous Discipline”of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance, NENU started the Project “Innovation Platform for Teacher Education” to achieve the higher goal of the “cradle of educators”. To improve the quality and deepen the reform of teachereducation, NENU initiated and implemented the cooperative model of “Normal Universities-Local Government-Elementary & Secondary Schools” (U-G-S) for cooperative education, which forms the teacher education and talents training pattern highly integrating theories with practices. By 2014, 7 doctoral dissertations from NENU were rated as National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations (NEDD), and another 17 doctoral dissertations werenominated for NEDD.
