Introduction to Yangming College

Established in July 2014, Yangming College at Guizhou University aims to support the transformation of undergraduate education in China, shifting from specialized education to a blend of general and specialized learning. The college seeks to innovate the organizational management model for general education, promote excellent traditional Chinese culture and regional cultural heritage, and enhance the quality of undergraduate teaching. The college primarily serves first-year students and structures its general education around “three main categories”: Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. It offers courses across “six major modules”: Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Chinese and Western Philosophy and Dialectical Thinking, Dialogue of Civilizations and Global Perspectives, Mathematical Sciences and Technology, Life Sciences and Ecological Civilization, and Art Appreciation and Aesthetic Experience. As of May 2024, the college haseducated nearly 60,000 students.

Yangming College has 31 faculty members and is organized into five departments: the Office of General Affairs, the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Student Affairs, the Youth League Committee, and the General Education Department. It features five academic divisions based on disciplinary characteristics: the Division of Humanities, the Division of Social Sciences, the Division of Natural and Management Sciences, the Division of Agricultural Sciences, and the Division of Ecology and Physical Education. The college actively engages in general education practices and integrates Yangming philosophy into the undergraduate curriculum. It has launched over a hundred core general education courses within the “three main categories” and “six major modules”, such as “Introduction to Yangming Studies,” “Wang Yangming and Guizhou Culture,” and “Mathematical Culture”, which were included in the “National Higher Education Smart Education Platform” in 2022. The college has alsoreformed the content and teaching methods of general education, transitioning more than ten courses from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach.

Additionally, Yangming College hosts the “Yangming Lecture Series” on general education, annually inviting about 20 renowned scholars from humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The college has established groups such as the Marxist Youth Study Group and Yangming Book House to organize a variety of ideologically rich and diverse activities, including traditional Chinese recitation competitions, integrity speech contests, constitutional knowledge contests, psychological drama contests, beautiful notes exhibitions, and “Good Morning Yangming” morning readings. By integrating themes like student development education, safety education, school history education, and faith education, the college has developed a comprehensive, multi-level orientation and guidance system for new students. The college also places great emphasis on strengthening the general education faculty, enhancing research, and fostering exchanges and cooperation in general education.

Through a year of general education, students at Yangming College initially experience a transition from their primary and secondary education, moving beyond confusion and reorienting themselves to university life. They gradually shed the rigid learning methods of primary and secondary education, which restricted curiosity, imagination, and independent thinking, and begin to embrace the new acadmic environment. The college has established a preliminary “Trinity” system of general education and practice, integrating value shaping, capability cultivation, and core knowledge acquisition. This system helps students develop good learning and living habits, and they generally achieve notable success in personal conduct, task handling, scholarship, and social interaction. This approach helps mitigate the limitations of early specialization in undergraduate education, which can be overly narrow and restrictive. According to evaluation reports from the university, students at Yangming College demonstrate higher levels of active collaborative learning compared to other universities nationwide, and faculty-student interactions surpass those at national “Double First-Class” universities. The richness of educational experiences and the supportiveness of the campus environment are on par with top institutions across the country.