Sichuan Normal University (SNU) is the largest provincial key university with the most complete course offerings among the provincial universities and colleges in Sichuan Province. Located on the beautiful Lion Hill in the eastern suburbs of Chengdu, SNU covers an area of 3,000 mu, and its total building area is about 1 million square meters. There are about 3,000 faculty and staffs. Of this figure, 770 are professors and associate professors, and 150 have Doctor's degree. There are 17 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering who have accepted SNU positions as chief, part-time or emeritus professors.
The origin of SNU can trace back to China Northeast University (CNEU) when it moved to Santai County, Sichuan Province in 1938. After the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-1945) was over, CNEU moved back to Northeast China. However, some CNEU faculty and staffs stayed in Sichuan, and in 1946, they established Northern Sichuan Workers and Peasants College on the same site of CNEU campus in Santai County. Later, it was renamed as Northern Sichuan University and moved to Nanchong City. In 1952, during the period of the merge of universities and colleges across the country, Sichuan Teachers College (STC) came into being. It mainly grew out of Northern Sichuan University, and at the same time, it merged Eastern Sichuan College of Education and some specialties from Sichuan University and West China University. In 1956, STC moved to Chengdu, and in 1985, approved by the State Commission of Education, STC was renamed as Sichuan Normal University.
SNU now has a main campus, the Eastern Campus and Caotang campus. It consists of 18 colleges: Chinese Language and Literature, Mathematics and Software, Continuing Education and others. Approved by the Ministry of Education, SNU set up two separate colleges. These campuses boast 21 research institutes and sectors, 69 undergraduate specialties and 42 specialties entitled to grant master's degrees. SNU is also authorized to enroll students for master's degree in education and students for certificates in various specialties at graduate level. In addition, SNU has 29 key disciplines and laboratories as well as personnel training centres.
SNU has a well-defined approach of how to operate the university. While emphasizing basic theory, basic knowledge and basic technical ability, SNU attaches importance to social work, internships, teaching probation, work-and-study program and other activities, making great efforts to strengthen the cultivation of students' quality and ability. SNU Aesthetic Education School is regarded as the first school of the same kind ever set up in the country. It offers more than 100 quality-oriented courses to students for all-round development, and over 40, 000 students graduated from this school in the past years. Accordingly this school has been appraised as the National Art Education Advanced School. On many occasions, many honors at national, provincial and municipal levels have been given to this school for students' social work activities. In addition, it has been granted as the National Advanced Work-Unit for 10 years in succession.
SNU attaches importance to campus cultural development and artistic quality cultivation. On SNU main campus, there is a wall of relief sculpture for the purpose of patriotism education. This wall is regarded as the largest one among the institutions of higher learning in the country. In order to further improve teaching quality, SNU has implemented a series of measures to deepen reforms in teaching. In addition, among the universities and colleges in Sichuan Province, SNU has taken the lead in using the credit system by the name of 1+2+X Personal Training Mode. This purpose is to train students in a wide variety of disciplines so as to form high-quality personal with solid theoretic base, some scientific research ability and strong capability of putting into practice what they have learnt. Over the past 50 years, about 200,000 students graduated from Sichuan Normal University. During their stay on campus, they studied for bachelor or master degrees; some for associate diplomas; and the others for continuing education. These graduates are well received by work-units in the society due to their solid theatrical base, wide knowledge, an adaptability and down-to-earth style. A large number of them are now the mainstay, working in elementary and middle schools, colleges and universities, institutes of scientific research, as well as in the administration offices of the CPC party and government at different level or other sectors.
SNU is strong force in scientific research work. In the past years, great achievement has been made in the fields of the theoretical research of education science, basic theory, applied technique as well as the efforts made to popularize scientific and technical result. SNU has a number of renowned professors, scholars and experts at international or national level. In accordance with the data from the Science Citation Index (SCI), Index to Scientific Reviews (ISTP) and Engineering Index (EI), academic papers and theses published by SNU faculty staffs in the fields of natural sciences have ranked very high all the time among Chinese universities and colleges. The research work in liberal arts is one of the best kind in the nation. SNU has set up the Bashu Cultural Research Centre, and it is one of the few research bases of the humanities and social sciences that have been designated by the Ministry of Education to a few provincial universities in the country. In the past five years, SNU faculty staffs have undertaken over 400 research projects that come from the National Social Sciences Foundation, the National Natural Sciences Foundation, the Xinhuo Program at national level, the National 863 Key Program of High Technology, the Tenth-Five Years Planning of the National Education Science as well as other scientific and technological programs at ministerial or provincial level. In addition, SNU faculty staffs have published over 500 academic books and 5,000 academic theses and papers. 380 of these were printed out by SCI, EI, or ISTP journals. SNU faculty staffs also have obtained 130 prizes by the name of the Scientific and Technologic Awards at national or provincial level, the Invention Awards, the Philosophy and Social Sciences Achievement Awards and the High Quality Teaching Achievement Awards.