Founded in 2003, Guangdong University of Science and Technology (GUST) is a private full-time university approved by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, with the main focus on engineering and the coordinated development of management, economics, literature, art and other disciplines. It is certified to confer a bachelor’s degree. Up to now, there are 17,605 full-time students studying in the university which includes School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, School of Computer Science, School of Management, School of Finance and Economics, School of Foreign Languages, School of Art and Design, Division of Public Basic Courses, Division of Ideological and Political Theory, College of Continuing Education, College of International Education and College of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The campus’ coverage has reached more than 1,700 mu, with the construction area of the Nancheng campus more than 480,000 square meters and the total planned construction area of the Songshan Lake campus 855,000 square meters. GUST has a collection of 2,951,500 books of all kinds, while the total value of teaching instruments and equipment is 10,9158,800 yuan.
The school aims at "creating a century-old university, nurturing elites for the industry", and adheres to the motto of “Virtue, Learning, Excellence and Conscience” and strategies of running school by "cultivating students with morals, focusing on practice, coordinating production with education, serving neighboring areas and developing coordinately". It is our duty to strengthen the construction of disciplines and cultivate high-quality applied talents by improving the conditions, enhancing core competitiveness and cultivating characteristics. After 16 years of development, our ability to run a school has steadily improved. In 2010, the school passed the evaluation of the talent training work of higher vocational colleges organized by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province. In 2011, it passed the evaluation of the Upgraded Undergraduate Colleges organized by the Ministry of Education. In 2015, it passed the evaluation of bachelor’s degree conferring unit organized by Guangdong Provincial Academic Degrees Committee. In 2018, it passed the assessment of the undergraduate teaching work by the Ministry of Education. The school has won honors such as the outstanding private institution of higher education, the advanced institution of higher education for the employment of graduates in Guangdong Province, the “ ‘two-new’ top 100 party organizations” of Guangdong Province, and the “top 10 most competitive private institutions of higher education in Guangdong Province”.
The university attaches great importance to being guided by newest information online, enhances the teaching ability of teachers by cloud technology, and innovates the training mode of talents. The university has investigated more than 2 million yuan on building a data center and on transforming 95% of classrooms into multimedia classrooms. Then, 55 cloud desktop labs and 2958 cloud desktop systems were installed to serve 16 undergraduate majors so as to realize multi-disciplinary resources sharing. In September 2012, the school introduced the “World University Town” cloud platform to build an undergraduate professional teaching resource library and built more than 300 online courses. Approved by the Ministry of Education in 2017, the school has become a special training base for “Internet Learning Space for Everyone”, which is the only approved base in a undergraduate university in the country. Since 2017, three training courses have been held to train more than 300 students from over 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
The university sets up majors and has been training talents to meet the needs of the industry in Dongguan through compound as well as collaborative training. The school now offers 31 undergraduate programs. In 2018, the school revised the teaching standards of 31 undergraduate majors, 14 of which have been certified to confer a bachelor's degree . The 31 undergraduate majors actively respond to 5 of the 6 major industries of Dongguan's “13th Five-Year Plan”, including 15 majors in engineering which mainly connect the electronic information industry and equipment manufacturing industry, 7 majors in management which mainly connect modern logistics and e-commerce industry, 3 majors in economy which mainly connect financial industry, and 2 majors in art design and 4 majors in literature. At the same time, the university promotes the “Innovation Class” program for talent training and sets up 12 innovation classes including “Robot Innovation Experiment Class” and “Cold Chain Logistics Management Innovation Class” to give full play to the advantages of technology and manpower that it has, and to promote production with the enterprises. The university specifically cultivates high-quality compound-applied professionals to meet the needs of the cooperative industry associations, through co-constructing the “Cross-border E-commerce Industry College” with Dongguan Industry and Trade Development Promotion Association, and through jointly establishing “Cold Chain Industry College” with Dongguan Cold Chain Association.
The public basic courses aim at cultivating the professional quality of students and providing service for training professional talents. The university pays attention to the application of public basic courses in different majors: it clarifies the teaching requirements of the curriculum according to the training objectives of different majors, sets up overall designs of different courses, selects course content, organizes professional cases to compose corresponding teaching materials and adopts feasible teaching methods to organize teaching process. Six textbooks such as Accounting Mathematics, Logistics Mathematics and Newly-edited Chinese Textbook for Universities were published, and a teaching resource library on Economic Mathematics was built. The university reformed public basic courses based upon the training objective of professional talents, thus to promote the integration of public basic courses and professional knowledge as well as technology to better cultivate the humanities literacy and professionalism of students.
The university pays attention to the promotion of teaching by organizing professional and technical skills competitions. In 2011-2018, there were 1,212 prizes and awards granted to 2,909 students, including 341 national prizes and awards granted to 625 person times, 742 provincial prizes and awards to 1,728 person times, and 129 city-level prizes and awards to 556 person times. During this period, the university has established 40 national-level and 215 provincial-level projects on innovation and entrepreneurship training of university students.
The university attaches great importance to improving the physical fitness of all students. Physical education focuses on students' interests, habits and skills in sports and highlights sports competitions. Efforts have been made to create a number of university sports brands. For example, on behalf of Guangdong Province, the men's basketball team participated in the CUBA Sunshine National Finals in 2016 and 2017, and won the national third prize twice. In 2017, the men's soccer team participated in the Governor's Cup Youth Football competition (university group) and won the third prize in the undergraduate group B and successfully promoted to the undergraduate group A. In the 2018 Guangdong University Football League, the school team won the championship with a 6-game winning streak. A series of sports achievements created a sports brand of the university and forged the spirit of unity, courage and struggle. In 2017, our university’s achievements in sports were fully affirmed in the province's sports work research report and the Education and Sports Letter of Guangdong Province[2017] No. 104. Our university was the only private one in Guangdong Province praised by the provincial government.
GUST has always adhered to the strategy of "strengthening GUST with talents" and makes great efforts to introduce and train full-time teachers with high quality, high education and high professional title. The university constantly optimizes the structure of teachers, forming a sufficient number of teachers with reasonable structure and excellent quality. In 2011-2018, the staff of the university published 6,005 academic papers in various academic journals, including 282 papers in Chinese core journals. 320 papers won research awards at the municipal level or above. 171 textbooks and academic works were published. 174 scientific research projects were awarded funding at the municipal level or above. 725 academic lectures were held. In 2018, 2 research projects were awarded funding from National New Engineering Research Projects, namely Research on Cultivation Mode in Engineering of Intelligent Manufacturing Standardization and Exploration and Practice of the Mode of Talent Cultivation of Undergraduate and Postgraduate in Cross-border E-commerce. GUST's Job-oriented Reform and Innovation of the Double-line Talent Training Mode of Software Engineering won the second prize of provincial education and teaching achievement award (higher education group).
The university attaches great importance to exchanges and cooperation with Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and countries in the world. Since 2012, academic exchanges, cultural exchanges, short-term studies, teacher-student visits, and postgraduate studies have been extensively carried out with Shu-Te Universityin Tiwan, University of Wisconsin-Stout in the U.S., Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, The University of Western Australia and City University of Macau.
GUST will earnestly study and implement the principles of the National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan and the Development Plan for Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area issued by the State Council, seize the development opportunities of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and constantly promote GUST to "improve quality, enhance core competitiveness, show characteristics and build a brand".