Delivered by President Chen Shiyi

Dear the Class of 2016 and the faculty, distinguished guests and friends,

Good morning!

Today, another 1,300 students join the Southern University of Science and Technology. Welcome to all to our community. You have made your first important choice of life right with your diligence and perseverance.

With a complete education network from undergraduates, postgraduates to overseas students, SUSTech has witnessed the largest enrolments this year since its inception. At the same time, SUSTech has brought together a number of excellent teachers from different areas. They are well-known scientists like Dr. Yu Dapeng, Dr. Chen Xiaofei, Dr. Liu Ke and Professor Yao Xin, scholars in humanities and social science like Professor Chen Yuehong and Professor Zhou Yongming, as well as international linguistics expert Kathy O’Sullivan. With outstanding teachers and students, we will embark on a new journey to educational innovation and prosperous development.

Welcome to all 992 undergraduate freshmen. By choosing a young SUSTech, you show to the world your guts, foresight and pursuit for independent exploration.

Welcome to all 277 postgraduates. I appreciate your courage to be part of cooperative training programs between SUSTech and eight world-renowned institutions of higher learning when SUSTech has no degree accreditation system. You symbolize our creative thinking and international outlook, and demonstrate our resolution to develop postgraduate education at a high starting point.

In particular, I would like to extend my sincere welcome to our first class of overseas students. Where are you? Show me your hands! Your arrival foretells an all-round connection of SUSTech with international standards. Many of you expressed in interviews your desire to make achievements in your study and become leaders in specific field. I believe that SUSTech will help you realize your dreams.

In the past summer, many freshmen have acted as a SUSTech people, and developed their own understanding of society with practices. Yang Zonghao from Sichuan organized many freshmen volunteers for several public benefit activities, delivering social responsibilities on behalf of SUSTech. Chen Junting from Zhejiang Province has delved into 3D printing, and made performance costumes for our street dance club. In the opening ceremony for military training and headmaster talk at afternoon breaks a few days ago, I have witnessed your rapid transformation from a high school student to an independent and tenacious SUSTech people in your straight posture, firm strides and fluent expression.

What impress me the most is that all our freshmen join SUSTech with entrepreneurial spirit. The day before yesterday, some students moved into the newly-built Li Yuan. Even tired after military training, you moved to new dorms as required without complaints. Thanks to meticulous preparation of seniors from the class of 2015, all dorms are tidy and clean. This marks not only a change of dormitory owners, but also the communication of our spirit: care about others and put the general interest above everything else.

Here I’d like to extend on behalf of SUSTech my heartfelt gratitude to the faculty and staff preparing for our north campus during the whole summer. You’ve shown indomitable entrepreneurship of SUSTech by what you did. Today I invite some first-line staff and workers here, and let us express our sincere gratitude to their devotion with warm applauses!

Just a few days ago, Professor Chen Yuehong, director of Humanities Center, proposed in the interview with China Education Daily that, a world-class university of science and engineering can’t do without top cultural education. This well reflects our educational concepts. SUSTech will launch its humanities center, social science center, language center and art center this semester, all headed by famous experts. SUSTech will develop on the path toward a modern, innovative university which pays attention to both science and humanity from a college of science and engineering that centers around certain subjects.

Encouraging progress was also made in basic subjects and cross-disciplinary fronts. While developing basic subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, we have made long-term plans in emerging branches such as information technology, big data, AI, marine science, aviation, life science, health care, new materials and new energy. The preparation of medical school is also underway. All in all, we seek to explore the inspiration for original innovation from different perspectives so that we’re able and possible to cooperate with industrial and research organizations, and serve our communities with sustainable technologies.

A team of high-quality teachers is essential to a university. In this light, we recruited leading talents around the world, giving rein to their key roles in building an academic team. SUSTech now has more than 240 teachers, including 14 academicians from home and abroad. Six of them work full-time. In addition, 12 teachers have been awarded as the “National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars”. This year also saw breakthroughs of SUSTech in winning national awards and awards for distinguished young scholars and excellent young scholars. In 2016, SUSTech rises to the 44th place on Nature Index from 55th among Chinese universities in 2015, and ranks 62nd on the Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars, representing the third-fastest growing university among its peers in the world.

In the upcoming years, you will witness great changes in our campus and rapid upgrade in infrastructures. The Phase-II campus construction is about to begin. Thanks to an investment of over 3 billion yuan from the Shenzhen government, we will erect 21 buildings, covering a building area of around 440,000 m². This together with our existing building area of 300,000 m² will cover functional clusters including five academic complexes for the school of science and the school of engineering, public buildings, dormitories and the SUSTech center. By the end of 2018, we will have a distinctive campus of beautiful gardens, diverse landscapes and sophisticated facilities, delivering the most comfortable conditions to facilitate your work, study and daily life.

Dear students, practice our unique educational ideas, and you will witness prosperous development of this emerging university. During my visit to Britain this summer, I met with Wang Jiale, our first excellent graduate and now a doctoral candidate of Oxford University. In him, I saw no innocence when he left SUSTech at the age of 17 two years ago, but maturity and wisdom of a young scientist. At SUSTech where knowledge creation, innovation and entrepreneurship are prioritized, I believe you will broaden your international vision, understand your social responsibilities and develop righteous morality. At the same time, you will have a solid, profound academic background, strong thirst for knowledge, and leadership for win-win cooperation. Nothing is impossible!

A new semester heralds a fresh future. I’d like to share some important suggestions about how to pursue your study in university.

First, love learning and lay a solid foundation of knowledge. A solid foundation of knowledge and strong ability entails continuous inputs. In the book Outliers, the author Malcolm Gladwell proposes an idea of “10,000 Hours of Practice”, suggesting that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. In your lifelong journey of knowledge seeking, university represents only a small portion. Therefore, it is important to learn how to learn and keep learning in universities, and make learning a habit driving our growth throughout your life.

Second, find yourself with interest-based learning. SUSTech adopts personalized education modes including “three systems and three education” which encourage all to fully understand yourselves and find your interest, growing to an excellent scholar. Interest is the best teacher, and the key to lifelong learning. In the long journey of life, you need to reflect upon yourself all the time. Be yourself, and find your spiritual pursuit. With this driving force, you will realize personal value and deliver value to the communities, building a better world.

Third, be innovative and entrepreneurial. Shenzhen has worked a miracle with innovation and pioneering spirit. SUSTech, a university based in Shenzhen, is also a standard setter which aims to break with convention and seeks innovation in the reform of domestic education. As a SUSTech people in Shenzhen, you should be committed to exploration and have the courage to fail. It is never easy, smooth to start your own business, but I hope that you can develop tenacity and sagacity of an entrepreneur.

 Fourth, aim high with down-to-earth attitude. When you pursue your dreams in a wider world, you should also learn how to get along with people. Make friends, learn to communicate and cooperate, and develop skills to weather the storm of life. Meanwhile, you need to act with down-to-earth attitude, and cultivate the ability of execution and leadership. Only with minds and hands can you grow into an elite who walks and talk and understand the society.

 Dear faculty and students, a saying goes that, “there is no road where no feet can measure, and there is no mountain which no one can climb.” The road to your dreams is unfolding. How to move forward and fulfil yourself depends on your efforts in the following years. I’m looking forward to your performance!

 Before I conclude my remarks, I’d like to share with you a few words from A Psalm of Life by the American poet Longfellow.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Thank you!