On May 25, 2025, the 6th Jiangsu Higher Education Honors Summit, hosted by the Kuang Yaming Honors School of Nanjing University, was successfully held. Attendees included Guo Xinyu, Level II Division Rank Official of the Higher Education Division at Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education; Jiang Tian, Assistant to the President of Nanjing University; and nearly 100 representatives from 23 honors schools across and beyond Jiangsu. Zhou Yuan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the suncitygroup太阳成集团(中国)-官方网站 版权所有, presided over the opening ceremony.
On behalf of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education, Guo Xinyu congratulated on the opening of the summit. She said that promoting honors education is of strategic significance, which is conducive to broadening the growth path, breaking traditional barriers, and establishing unified standards, thus meeting the individualized development needs of students, promoting the sharing of high-quality resources, and improving the quality of honors education. She proposed to encourage honors schools to explore “one school, one policy”, “one student, one scheme”, “one student, one curriculum schedule”, and “one student, one project”, establish and improve the honors education system, improve the whole-chain cultivation, provide more scientific and standardized guarantees for students’ growth, ensure that talent cultivation better meets the needs of national strategies and local industries, form a distinctive brand effect of first-class undergraduate education in Jiangsu, and set an example nationwide.
On behalf of Nanjing University, Jiang Tian extended a warm welcome to the guests of the summit. He emphasized that since its establishment in 2018, the Jiangsu Honors Education Alliance has taken promoting the development of honors education in Jiangsu universities as its own responsibility and has made every effort to promote exchanges and cooperation among member universities. He said that with the strong support of the leaders of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education and the honors schools of sister universities, the alliance will surely deepen resource sharing, strengthen collaborative innovation, actively explore and boldly practice around the core goal of cultivating top-notch innovative talents, make more breakthroughs in building an innovative education model and improving the cultivation quality, and make Jiangsu’s contributions to building China into a leading nation in education.
With the theme of “Higher Education Reform in the AI Era: Opportunities and Missions of Honors Education”, this summit focused on the reform of cultivating top-notch talents in honors schools in the AI era and invited 8 honors school leaders to give keynote speeches. Wang Jun, Dean of the Undergraduate School and Dean of the Kuang Yaming Honors School of Nanjing University, delivered a speech entitled “The Nanjing University Plan for Honors Schools” and introduced the school’s persistent exploration and reform in the innovative practice of the general science education and teaching model. He stated that Kuang Yaming Honors School will leverage the reform of its talent cultivation model as a driving force, actively respond to the era proposition of cultivating top-notch innovative talents, thereby forging a distinctive NJU path in honors education.
Sun Wei, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Chien-Shiung Wu College of Southeast University, Jiang Yanlong, Secretary of the Party Committee and Dean of the Changkong School of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shao Zebin, Dean of the Honors Collge of Nanjing Normal University, Zhang Kun, Dean of the Tsien Hsue-shen College of Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Wu Congxin, Vice Dean of the Sun Yueqi Honors College of China University of Mining and Technology, Tang Jihai, Dean of the 2011 College of Nanjing Tech University, and Xuan Hui, Secretary of the Party Branch of the Hua Lookeng Honors College of Changzhou University also shared their views on the theme of the conference.
After the keynote speeches, the representatives gathered together to hold a round-table forum on topics such as “the functional orientation of honors schools and the reform path of talent cultivation” and “how AI empowers the cultivation of top-notch innovative talents”. As the initiating unit of the alliance, the Kuang Yaming Honors School of Nanjing University issued an initiative on the construction of the Jiangsu University Honors Alliance with the theme of “Deepening Cooperation, Sharing Resources, and Contributing Digital and Intelligent Momentum to Promoting the New Practice of Chinese-style modernization in Jiangsu”. Representatives from member institutions engaged in robust discussions aligned with the educational demands of the AI era, focusing on three key strategic priorities: deepening the sharing of course resources to jointly build high-quality curriculum systems, strengthening the sharing of top-tier faculty to collaboratively develop outstanding teaching teams, and optimizing the construction of student organization alliance to collectively nurture pioneering innovators. Through these in-depth exchanges, participants consolidated consensus on reform initiatives and clarified practical pathways for future collaboration.
The representatives of various universities and colleges all expressed their intention to actively respond to the mechanism of resource sharing and collaborative education. Under the guidance of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education, they would jointly contribute the “Jiangsu Plan” to the cultivation of top-notch innovative talents in universities in the new era and jointly create a new situation of high-quality development of honors education.
