My dear students, teachers and friends:
Good morning!
On this special day the upcoming Teachers’ Day, we gather here to welcome 935 new students from 21 provinces, cities and autonomous regions all over the country who come to Shenzhen and especially come to SUSTC. This is the first time that I meet everyone at the Opening Ceremony as the principal of SUSTC. Different from former years, we have not only freshmen here, but also all the teachers, students, staff members and workers, as well as representatives from different fields who care and support the construction of the University for the long term, to witness this moment together. It is not only an Opening Ceremony, but also a family party of SUSTC. Five years ago, we only had 45 students here, and now, we’ve had an internationalized and high-level teacher team composed of almost 180 persons; and the number of current students has broken through 2100 for the first time, including 12 graduate students who were admitted formally and cultured together with related universities. SUSTC has already entered into a new stage in which it improves steadily and develops fast.
Today, I will congratulate all freshmen:
Congratulations to these students who have adored the University all along, just because you made a correct choice with dreams and insistence. Now, you can say proudly: “I’m in the Innovation Capital, Shenzhen; and my college life starts from SUSTC.”
Once our new teacher, Qing Hu, told me: The world is so big, but I only want to come to the SUSTC. How firm the choice is! Then, why did we choose to come here? Because we dare to choose, innovate and adventure; And because we are a group of people who are full of ambitions and passions, and more importantly, who are down-to-earth and hard-bitten. Among us, there is a chair professor of the Northwestern University in the United States, Xia Zhihong, who solved Pangle d guess, and he is coming here to establish the best Department of Mathematics in the world. There is the most outstanding American-born-Chinese chair professor of hydroscience and the University of Alabama, Zheng Chunmiao, who is going to make the University’s College of Environment become the best study base in the world, thus fully supporting the water environment treatment of Shenzhen. There is Professor Zhang Xumu, who will invite a Nobel Laureate to participate in the construction of the Department of Chemistry in the University. There are also Vice-principals Wu Chuanyue and Tang Tao, Dean of General Affairs Lu Chun, Professors Shan Xiaowen, He Jiaqing, Cheng Xin and so on. There are more than 20 geniuses, more than 40 young geniuses and a lot of thoughtful and capable professors who gave up generous treatment abroad, came here, took root in the University and took a broad view of the whole world.
The same “capriciousness” with you and them, I left the position of Vice-principal of Peking University and came here. On this vivifying land, we will construct a new type of world-class university with Chinese characteristics together, with our passion and solid work.
SUSTC represents imagination, self-confidence and a broad view. There is a tradition of daring to break through and try; there is a pursuit of being first-class; there is new and uncrossed frontiers in science; there are professors who really like to communicate with students; there are various labs which are open to you; and there is an omni-directional stereometric formula international campus.
Meanwhile, you’ve also chosen the most innovational city – Shenzhen. This is the first special economic zone established after the reform and opening-up policy of China was launched. There is the courage of “Daring to be a pioneer” ; there is the atmosphere of “encouraging innovations, and being tolerant of failure” ; there is the belief of “Empty talks would lead the country astray, and hard work can rejuvenate the nation”; and especially there is the wide mind of “you are a citizen of Shenzhen, if only you came here”.
Dear new students, from now on, you are a member of SUSTC. You will devote yourself to the development and construction of the University with us together, share her honor and achievements, and bear responsibility for her future and duty. I appreciate the words of Student He Yifei of 2015 from Shanghai, “Choosing SUSTC is choosing to make history, and making history is a thing with a great sense of accomplishment”.
SUSTC is a new type of university. She has the new vision and thought, and adopts a new system and new mechanism. She has the historical mission of being a vanguard and playing an exemplary role for China’s higher education reform, exploring the construction of a modern university system and innovative personnel training model. SUSTC is also dedicated to innovative national construction and modernization, internationalization, and innovative city construction in the Pearl River Delta and Shenzhen. Being new means that we have more opportunities to create: here, you can become the founder of a new community, the sponsor of a new research topic or an architect of a new maker center.
SUSTC is a triune university integrating Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It will focus on the frontier of science and technology , and promote the competitiveness of its basic research; focus on major national demands, and promote the competitiveness of applied basic research; as well as focus on the science and technology development of Shenzhen, and promote the competitiveness of applied research. Here, we will cultivate scholars of the Nobel Prize level , and also hope that our teachers and students accomplish the feats of such entrepreneurs as Ren Zhengfei and Ma Huateng.
If you noticed, you will find that the Dasha River, which is across our beautiful campus, is a wisdom river. Upstream, there are SUSTC, the Graduate Schools of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and Tsinghua University,Shenzhen Branch of Harbin Institute of Technology as well as other units representing original innovation; downstream, there are Shenzhen’s Science and Technology Park, Mindray, ZTE and a series of high-tech enterprises which were created here; further downstream, the Dasha River flows into Shenzhen Bay and then gallops into the sea, which represents Shenzhen creation and China creation step into the world. I think this is a moral of the nature that SUSTC represents the future original innovation of Shenzhen, and is bound to lead innovation to the world.
SUSTC is a university belonging to the future. The four years you will stay here will be the fast-paced years when the University will develop and change rapidly. The second phase of campus planning will be completed in these four years. A modern campus will be made more perfect, and the most beautiful campus in China will be presented to you. According to the disciplined development plan which the SUSTC Council has approved, the University will gradually build six colleges, i.e. college of science, engineering college, college of life and health, business college, college of humanities and social sciences, and college of innovation and entrepreneurship. More than 20 departments and 23 frontier cross-over research centers will be produced. In accordance with the plan, in the next 10 years SUSTC will be led by world-class scholars and professors who will build a high-quality teaching staff team composed of about 800 people, which shall have noble ethics, reasonable structure, outstanding teaching and scientific research ability, dynamism and international competitiveness. The University will eventually have 8000 students in total (by recruiting 1000 undergraduates and 1000 graduate students each year). Recently, the SUSTC signed agreements with Guangdong Province and Shenzhen City, for building a high-level technological university. The University will insist on “credit system, collegiate system, tutorial system, as well as internationalization, individuation and elite” as the core and characteristics of the top creative talents training model. SUSTC has 29 graduates at the first session, among whom at least 23 people got admission from the world’s famous universities (including Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Columbia University, California Institute of Technology and other colleges and universities) to pursue higher degrees, and some students have been employed by Huawei, Tencent and other famous enterprises. I believe that, as the students here, you will get more and better growth and diversification for further study and employment opportunities in SUSTC’s rapid development.
There are Harvard and MIT in Boston, Stanford and Berkeley in San Francisco, Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing, Jiaotong University and Fudan University in Shanghai. I firmly believe that SUSTC will become a world-class university and the brightest name card of Shenzhen.
University is the beginning of an independent life. To you who attend SUSTC, I have 3 points of hope:
I hope you can lay a solid foundation for lifelong learning. University study is just a small part of the learning career in your whole life, but it’s also a very important part of it. In this short period of university life, you will have a feast of rich knowledge, and shape an attitude to the unknown world, and cultivate personal systematic learning methods and abilities which are suitable for yourselves. Einstein once said: the knowledge one masters is just like the interior of a circle, and the unknown part is the exterior of the circle. When a person’s knowledge becomes richer, the circle will be bigger, and the unknown side it gets to becomes wider, then people would feel more ignorant. So if you can feel your ignorance, it is actually valuable wisdom in your life. It makes us feel not tired all the time, eager to explore new knowledge and adhere to the belief of lifelong learning. University life is the best time to cultivate this learning belief, and build the solid foundation for learning. SUSTC adopts a unique collegiate system providing a community with close relationships and interaction between teachers and students for different grades and majors. I wish that students here can experience thought collision, get joy and satisfaction from acquiring new knowledge, have minds and hands, cultivate own learning systems and methods which are suitable for yourselves, and shape your reverence for knowledge itself and the humble spirit of lifelong learning.
I hope you can cultivate independent and self-confident spirit and temperament, and always hold a critical spirit in the process of exploring the unknown. Innovation starts from critical thinking, and the persistence of rational criticism is the shortcut to truth. In university, you will learn all kinds of new knowledge, new theories, and new ideas. When you have active thinking and analysis, instead of passive acceptance, and always have doubts in accessing new knowledge, your knowledge and theory system will be stronger and more flexible. You can only acquire findings and demonstrate innovation by thinking independently, by eliminating the false and retaining the true in so much knowledge, and getting through it, then you will open the door to success.
I hope you pay attention to communication and cooperation with others when having high aspirations, and cultivate positive team spirit. After you have entered into the laboratory, you will find that today’s scientific research is difficult to complete by an individual, and students will always need to brainstorm and work together as a team. The European organization for nuclear research, which detected the “God particle” – the Higgs boson (Higgs) in 2013, is composed of about 6500 scientists and engineers from 80 countries, and more than three thousand full-time employees. The experiments and theoretical studies they conducted often needed the cooperation of hundreds of people. With good team spirit and orderly coordination, their scientific research work was conducted efficiently and accurately. Team spirit is an important part of comprehensive quality, and it’s also the important embodiment of personal emotional intelligence. Modern education emphasizes the independence and the cultivation of personality, and places more emphasis on the importance of team work. I hope you can cultivate the spirit of cooperation, good communication and mutual help; as well as fight shoulder to shoulder with like-minded friends, realize your dreams and change the world.
Dear teachers and students, we are standing in the stadium of the 2011 Shenzhen Universiade, wherein the slogan “Start here, make a difference” can still be seen clearly. This is the power of the spirit of Shenzhen and also the trumpet that urges us forward.
Finally, I want to use an extract of The Road Not Taken from one of the most popular American poets of the 20th century, Robert Frost, to encourage each other and all of you.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
