The School of Foreign Languages (previously known as the Department of Foreign Languages) was set up accompanied by the establishment of Changchun Institute of Technology (CIT) on June 12, 2000, which was formed by merging the foreign language teaching and research offices of the basic departments of three national demonstration Colleges (Changchun College of Architecture, Changchun College of Industry and Changchun College of Hydropower) formerly affiliated to China Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation, the Ministry of Etallurgical Industry and the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power. Presently, the School consists of English Department (English Major), College English Teaching Department, Minority Language Teaching Department and College English Experiencing Center. The School is a secondary teaching unit of CIT, undertaking the teaching tasks of English major (Economic and Trade direction) of English Department and Public Foreign Languages (graduate, undergraduate and junior college) of CIT.
Adhering to the CIT’s motto—“Manifesting with High Virtue, Realizing with Lofty Ideal”, the School promotes culture and education, actively devotes itself to the inheritance and innovation of Chinese and Western cultures, and has cultivated a large number of compound applied English talents with national sense and virtuous and pragmatic quality. In 2003, CIT was selected among the 180 “Pilot Units of College English Teaching Reform” by the Ministry of Education of China; In 2006, CIT was selected as the “Demonstration Base for Experiential College English Teaching Reform” by the Higher Education Press.
The School has a team of teachers with reasonable academic structure, dedication, pioneering spirit and unity. At present, there are 65 teachers, including 6 Professors, 26 Associate Professors, 8 Doctoral Teachers and 36 Master’s Degree teachers. 25 teachers have visited the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Macedonia and Jordan for foreign exchange and study.
Since its establishment, through the tireless efforts of all the staff of the School, the School has made great progress in various work.
The teaching reform and curriculum construction have achieved great results. In 2009 and 2014, the School won the third prize for Excellent Teaching Achievements in higher education in Jilin Province respectively. From 2008 to 2021, the School won 7 first, second and third prizes for Excellent Teaching Achievements in higher education.
In 2005, College English and Intensive Reading were selected as Excellent Courses in Jilin Province. In 2012, the course Translation was selected as the Excellent Course in Jilin Province. In 2019, the College English teaching team of the School was honored as “Excellent Teaching Team of CIT”.
From 2019 to 2021, the three online courses Society and Culture of English Speaking Countries, the Successful Ways of English Writing and College English 2 were successively selected as Online Open Excellent Courses in Jilin Province. Three online courses, College English 1, English Intensive Reading and Writing 1, and English Intensive Reading and Writing 2 were selected as School Level Online Open Excellent Courses, and were included in the “Teaching Demonstration” of Xueyin Online. In 2022, the above six online courses were displayed on the National Higher Education Intelligent Education Platform.
The discipline construction has given initial results. In 2018, Foreign Language and Literature, as a first-class discipline, was selected as a Key Class-D Discipline in the “13th Five-year Plan” by CIT. The discipline centers on the aim of talent cultivation of application-oriented undergraduate colleges, relies on the basic industry background of CIT, and combines the characteristics of CIT’s advantageous disciplines, gradually realizes the interdisciplinary compounding of disciplines, revises the training plan for English majors, reconstructs the curriculum system, and adds four engineering courses to the interdisciplinary curriculum module. The academic orientation is aimed at the national and local economic development strategies, finding its way to Jilin, China and the world. Through the four years of development, the integration process of discipline and specialty courses has accelerated, gradually highlighting the advantages and characteristics of the discipline, and achieving coordinated and staggered development with similar disciplines in other universities.
Taking multiple measures to promote teaching through research, the School has actively led the majority of teachers to participate in educational scientific research, and won 6 first, second and third prizes for Excellent Achievements in social science research of colleges and universities in Jilin Province. The School has undertaken more than 130 national and provincial vertical and horizontal projects, receiving more than 1.6 million yuan on scientific research, and more than 60 provincial teaching research and reform projects. More than 700 papers have been published, including more than 200 retrieval papers such as SSCI, SCI, CSSCI, EI and Chinese core journals. The faculty of the School edited and participated in the compilation of more than 70 national planning textbooks and provincial textbooks.
“Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” has made great achievements. From 2018 to 2022, the School’s “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” achieved a historic leap, winning 15 gold, silver and bronze awards in the “Jilin Internet + College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition” and 21 first, second and third prizes in the “Internet + College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition” of CIT. In the past four years, the School has won the excellent organization award of “Internet + College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition”. Teachers and students jointly completed 38 national and provincial innovation and entrepreneurship training programs for college students and published more than 40 papers.
Learning and teaching have been promoted through competition. Since 2003, the School has been holding various and colorful “College English Experience Festival” every year to build a stage for students to display their language learning achievements. Up to now, the number of participants has reached more than 20000. Excellent contestants were selected to participate in the “FLTRP Cup” National English Competition in Jilin and won more than 60 first, second and third prizes. From 2019 to 2021, the School won the “First Prize of Excellent Organization in Discipline Competition” of CIT.
