College of First-Year Students, Nanjing University

Release time：2023-04-25

In order to comprehensively implement the fundamental task of establishing moral education in universities in the new era, deepen and improve the new pattern of “five educations”, and comprehensively build a new system of “three elements and four dimensions” talent cultivation in the new era, Nanjing University established the College of First-Year Students in July 2020. The College of First-Year Students is an educational and management institution for first-year full-time undergraduate students, with the Student Education Center and the seven academies of Bingwen, Xingzhi, Youxun, Anbang,Yuxiu, Kaijia and Jianxiong.

The College of First-Year Students is committed to systematically integrating liberal education with professional education, focusing on the cultivation of both arts and science and humanities and science literacy, and emphasizing students’ independent choice and personalized development needs. It integrates the high-quality educational resources of the whole university, builds a high-class faculty, hires honorary teachers from inside and outside the university to teach the core courses of general studies; creates a high-level general studies curriculum system, diversifies the curriculum modules such as general studies courses, freshman seminars and subject orientation courses, invites famous professors to give lectures on subject topics, and effectively promotes cross-discipline, teaching and research, and the combination of general studies and specialization.

The College of First-Year Students implements the college system and establishes a college-based student learning and living community to create a personalized adaptive learning model, a connotative hierarchical growth model, a comprehensive nurturing model and an all-round environment model for freshmen. The College of First-Year Students has deepened the mentorship system for freshmen, with more than 300 freshmen mentors covering various disciplines, and together with career mentors, faculty mentors, and peer mentors, forming a comprehensive whole-staff education team in the College to help students strengthen their college knowledge and self-awareness.

The College of First-Year Students strives to build an open cultural field, an active thought field and a harmonious ecological field, and to guide freshmen to “buckle the first button”. It aims to stimulate students’ learning interest and development potential, to choose the path that suits them among multiple development paths, to cultivate professionals with a big pattern, real skills and knowledge, and to explore the reform and development model of higher education with characteristics of NJU,  in an attempt to add new strength to make the best undergraduate education in China.