2015年6月30日 mice周刊
Wuxi Institute of Technology: infiltrating campus with “culture”
Recently the Beijing Opera Master Troupe, headed by Huang Xiaoci, famous Beijing Opera performing artist and winner of the Plum Blossom Prize of the theatrical award of China for two times, held a grand appreciation event of famous excerpts of Beijing Opera at Wuxi Institute of Technology (WXIT). The theater was packed and the wonderful performance brought the house down.
Zhu Aisheng, secretary of the CPC Committee at WXIT, said that the program of “introducing classic arts into campus” was an important carrier of the cultural quality education of WXIT. “The vocational education is not to produce ‘machine’, but to foster ‘people’”. The efforts of implementing cultural quality education at vocational institutes and universities are to correct the simple vocational skill training and the educational thought of quick success of higher vocational education, foster students’ capability of adapting to the society, and enable them to become a professional proficiency in know-hows and operation and a “social man” with noble sentiments, healthy personality and a strong sense of social responsibility.
WXIT has opened more than 140 public cultural and art optional courses and lectures, and more than 400 cultural quality education programs, involving almost all teachers and students. Thus it is common for teachers to be eager to teach the “popular courses” and students eager to learn the popular courses. The leaders, teachers and students of WXIT are all active in the cultural quality education programs.
“The long standing popularity and further promotion of the cultural quality education courses and programs in WXIT cannot be separated from an efficient management system and examination index system,” said Zhu. In 2007 when WXIT started construction of the “national demonstrative higher vocational institute” in an all-round way, it formulated and released the Implementation Plan of WXIT Student Cultural Quality Education and established the Student Cultural Quality Education Office. Each year WXIT appropriates special funds to organize and promote the cultural quality education of the institute. In addition, WXIT has included the public optional courses of arts and literature, lectures, social practice, cultural programs, art performance, contests, innovation and creation into the “cultural quality credit evaluation system”, requiring students to have nine credits of cultural and art education in three years before graduation.
“You can walk along Weifu Road to Walter Road to meet me.” A new comer at WXIT must be puzzled by this. Weifu and Walter are names of famous enterprises and partners of WXIT and they are now also names of some roads on the campus.
All the roads on the campus of WXIT are named after enterprises and the practice workshops and workplaces all have slogans of “formative education” and corporate culture. It is also common to see the cultural marks with regional characteristics on the campus, for example, the large scale sculpture of Taihu Lake Sailing Boats as the school symbol, sites decorated with Taihu Lake stone, and student dormitories named after the gardens by Taihu Lake such as Plum Garden and Orchid Garden. According to the characteristics that the higher vocational institutes mainly serve the local economic and social development, WXIT has integrated the advanced regional cultural into the campus, and introduced the outstanding corporate culture into the classroom and practice bases. “Make each wall, each road and each site of interest of the campus a vivid text material of quality education,” said Cheng Jianfen, vice director of the Department of Arts and Design of WXIT.
Huishan clay figurine, a traditional craftsmanship of Wuxi, has long been an optional course of the public literature and arts at WXIT. The institute has invited several masters of Huishan clay figurine to give lectures and teach the technique. The students majoring in the CNC technology were enlightened by the clay figurine production and modeled the metal spare parts into Venus statue with the CNC modeling knowledge. The vivid statues have been presented to guests as a special gift of WXIT. Today producing “Venus” statue has become a required course of students of the CNC technology.
Infusing “arts” with “technology”, and edifying personality with culture. “In the courses of literature and arts, students can not only experience the beauty of the traditional technique and improve their appreciation capability, but also integrate the knowledge into their study of professional courses, for example, materials, shape and marketing modes of artware. These have a realistic significance for the technical talents,” said Cheng.
