User:Larryjun

The Northwestern Normal University consists of 17 colleges, 6 teaching and training centers and 54 research institutes, of which 2 are directly under the minority of Education and 1 provincial base for humane studies. At present the university is running 47 undergraduate programs, 42 M.A.programs and 3 Ph.D. programs. There are 7 province-approved key specialities in the university. Of the university’s total staff members of 2616,1122 are teachers and scientific researchers, of whom 116 are full professors and 451 are associate professors.

The university boasts a good capacity of scientific research and has won great academic success in the field of educational theory, Chinese literature, ancient Chinese language, the study of inscription on bamboo slips and wood tablets, and chemistry and chemical engineering. After the reform and the open door policy came into effect in China, the university has extended its international academies exchanges and cooperation and established academic exchanges with dozen universities and institutes in over 10 counties around the world.

The university occupies a total area of over 60 hectares and all the buildings on the campus have a floor space of 44.6 thousand square meters. The library has a collection of 1.82 million volumes of books.The University publishes several academic journals such as Journal of Northwest Normal University (both social and natural science edition), Studies on Audio-visual Education, The Silkroad, Journal of Northwest Adult Education, Studies on the Teaching of Mathematics.

Northwestern Normal University has grown into a multi-disciplined institute of higher learning with distinctive features and academic influences both domestically and internationally. In the course of the implementing of the strategy of developing the western regions, the university will continue to strive to build itself into a comprehensive university with teacher training as its focus.

The predecessor of NWNU is The National Beiping University which grew out of The Faculty of Education of The Metropolitan University founded in 1902. After the July 7 Incident of 1937, Beiping Normal University moved to Chenggu in Shanxi Province and merged with other universities which were also forced to moved here and established Northwest Union University. Beiping University became the teachers college within the university. In August 1939, separated from the university, the Teachers College became independent and was renamed National Northwest Normal College. In 1941, the college moved to Lanzhou, Gansu Province. After the Anti-Japanese War, part of the staff and students returned to Beiping and resumed Beiping Normal University while most of them remained in Lanzhou and established Northwest Teachers College. Before 1958, the university was directly under the leadership of The Ministry of Education. It was subordinated to the government of Gansu Province and renamed Gansu Teachers University in 1958.The university resumed its name Northwest Teachers College in 1981 and was renamed as Northwestern Normal University in 1988.It is the key university of Gansu Province. Since the 80 of the 20 century The Ministry of Education and the government of Gansu Province have set up in succession a series of institutes such as “The Northwest Center for Training Teachers of National Minorities”,” The Center for Training Tibetan Teachers”,” The Center for Training Teachers for College and Universities in Gansu”, and “The Gansu Provincial Training Center for Modern Distance Education”. The University has its own website in Chinese as well as in English at http://www.nwnu.edu.cn