History and Lineage
The School of Foreign Studies (SFS) of Hefei University of Technology (HFUT) originates from the foreign Language Teaching and Research Section of the Basic Department of Hefei Polytechnic University (former translated English name of HFUT). In 1985, a foreign language department was established. In June 1997, the department incorporated with the former Foreign Language Department of Anhui University of Technology and formed a new foreign language department. In June 1999, the department merged with the Social Sciences Department of HFUT and became a part of the School of Humanities and Economics. In 2008, the department was separated from the school, becoming an officially established school of foreign languages, and in 2016, the school was renamed the School of Foreign Studies.
Structure and Facilities
Under the SFS are five departments and five centers, namely, College English Department I, College English Department II, Postgraduate Foreign Language Teaching Department, Foreign Language Department, and English Department of Xuancheng Campus; and College English Teaching and Reform Center, Discipline and Specialty Development Center, Modern Education Technology Center, Language Service Center, and International Exchange Center. The SFS now boasts a dozen language laboratories, one simultaneous interpreting laboratory, and three EPCs for postgraduates.
Faculty and Academic Activities
At present, the SFS has a total of 146 full-time teachers in Hefei and Xuancheng campuses, including 8 professors, 44 associate professors, and nearly 30 teachers with doctoral degrees. Over the recent years, more than 100 teachers have worked as visiting scholars or participated in academic visits either at home or abroad. Presently, 78.7 percent of the full-time teachers are under the age of 50, working diligently in several outstanding, well-oriented and encouraging teaching and research teams. Quite a few teachers hold important posts in national and provincial societies and associations, or work as chief editors or editorial board members for famous Chinese and foreign academic journals, influential in the academic community. Every year, the SFS arranges more than ten lectures to be taught by well-known domestic and foreign scholars and organizes several seminars or symposiums centering on linguistics, literature, translation studies, cross-cultural studies, and country and regional studies.
Specialties and Training Quality
The SFS offers two specialty programs to undergraduates majoring in English and Indonesian. HFUT enrolled in 1977 its first group of English majors to be trained into college teachers. Since 1988, the SFS has continously matriculated students. In 2016, it opened English classes on Xuancheng Campus. Up to now, more than 2,000 students have graduated from the two campuses. Now the SFS has a registered student population of nearly 800. For many years, the English classes have endeavored to cultivate students into interdisciplinary English professionals proficient in English, familiar with English and American culture, knowledgeable in engineering technology, and well learned in professional knowledge of international trade and other relevant fields. In October 2008, the English teaching for undergraduates was rated as excellent by the evaluation expert group from the Ministry of Education. In 2021, the English specialty was approved as a national first-class undergraduate specialty development unit, which means the English specialty of the SFS is now the one and only in Anhui competing with other national first-class construction units on the tracks of the central stadium.
In response to the Belt and Road Initiative, the SFS set up an Indonesian class in Hefei Campus in 2019. Since then, it has maintained strong partnerships and collaborations with many leading Indonesian universities. Currently, the SFS has approximately 80 undergraduates majoring in Indonesian. Graduates are highly sought-after by employers, and even some of them were recruited by ministries and commissions of the central government.
The SFS has been authorized to offer first-level discipline master's programs to students majoring in foreign languages and literature, under which are two second-level discipline master's programs to academic postgraduates and one to professional postgraduates. In 2015, the SFS succeeded in passing a special evaluation on its Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) program conducted by the Academic Degrees Office of the State Council. The students of the SFS have achieved excellent results in various national and provincial competitions, and the employment rate of postgraduates is fairly high.
Research orientations and outcomes
In terms of research centers, the SFS has six so far, i.e. Linguistics Research Center, Intercultural Communication and Technological Translation Center, Country and Regional Research Center, Literary Translation Research Center, Intercultural Communication Research Center, and English and American Literature Research Center. In recent years, the SFS has successfully completed and is currently working on over 10 projects sponsored by the National Social Science Fund and the Ministry of Education, as well as some vertical (directly from upper leading authorities) research projects and transverse (among partners) research projects. Over the past three years, the teachers of the SFS have published more than 200 papers in various domestic and international academic journals, such as Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Journal of Foreign Languages, Chinese Translation Journal, Academics, Applied Linguistics, and Studies in Language and Linguistics. Additionally, they have produced more than 20 public publications, including monographs, translated works, and teaching materials planned and listed by the State. They have also won four provincial teaching achievement awards. Two teaching teams were honored as provincial models, and 13 teaching courses were rated as provincial first-class ones. Such applauded courses as Academic English Writing and Communication, Scientific and Technological Translation, Introduction to Interpreting, and Selected Readings of British Literature have been launched on mainstream MOOC platforms in China, catering to a large number of learners.
Opening up and international cooperation
The SFS now has ten foreign experts teaching in Anhui, respectively from the United Kingdoms, the United States, Canada, Russia, and Indonesia. It has established a partnership with the University of Westminster, UK for a “3+1+1” joint training program (the first group of student went to study in the UK in 2019). In 2020, the SFS signed a letter of intent with the Faculty of Culture, Hassanuddin University, Indonesia, for cooperation. Over the past three years, the SFS has sent over 50 students to study at prestigious universities overseas. Since 2019, some international students from Yemen and students from Hong Kong have come to study at the SFS. The SFS has set up an IELTS Examination Center in HFUT, which serves as the sole IELTS for UKVI paper and pencil test venue in Anhui. After years of development, the SFS becomes more international.
The teachers of the SFS take the strategy of “fostering virtue through education for serving the country as their mission, strive to further develop the discipline into a national first-class one, and works hard to create a high-level, research-oriented, and first-class school of foreign studies internationally famous with engineering characteristics.
(Data collected by July 2023)