Huanggang Normal University (HNU) is situated in the historic and cultural ancient town Huangzhou, capital of Huanggang City, on the bank of the Yangtze River, east of Hubei province. The city with 7.3million population is proud of its profound cultural foundation and glorious revolutionary tradition and is abundant in giants from ancient times to the present, such as Bi Sheng the inventor of prototype printing, Li Shizhen the great pharmacist, Li Si Guang the great Geologist, General Lin Biao, Li Xiannian and Dong Biwu---2 ex-presidents of the state, to name just a few. The well-known “General’s county”, "Professor’s County”, "Newspaperman County” and “Doctor Street” make this area mysterious and glorious all over the country.
The university was founded in 1905, with more than 100 years history, now grown to be a multi-disciplined state-owned university, biggest and best in the area, with both teacher-training and general purpose programs, which gives priority to undergraduate education. It claims to have 83.5 hectors (1,500Mu) of land with three campuses which have been honored with the title of “State Outstanding Unit in Forestation” and "Provincial Garden-like University”. With 0.4 billion yuan worth of static property, HNU has more than 7000 equipments with total value of 80 million yuan. Its library owns 1.2 million books, campus network and service prevail, international exchanges and cooperation resulted in its long and stable relationship with more than 10 universities in the world and overseas student programs since 2002.
Famous as the cradle of qualified teachers, HNU has been contributing to the basic education of the area as well as whole China. For instance, 70% head masters of middle schools of the city, including tree presidents of the famous Huanggang Middle School, are graduates of HNU. For 7 years, students won the first prize in country-wide Annual Mathematical Model Competition for university students since 1999. Its employment rate for graduates has been as high as 90%, and topped the provincial universities in 2003. Its high teaching and management quality was again proved by the fact that among the first batch of schools, HNU passed the assessment of undergraduate education by Educational Ministry of China in 2004.
HNU now has 13 schools or departments with 44 undergraduate programs, with 13,000 full-day students and 1,100 stuff members among whom there are 234 professors and associate professors and 298 teachers with doctorate or master degrees, with more than 100 part-time or honorary professors and around 20 foreign teachers. In the past 5 years, more than 4,300 academic papers and 100 books have been published and 182 research projects have been carried out with 17 first prizes for scientific progress and excellent teaching research awarded by the provincial government.