Shandong Vocational and Technical University of International Studies (hereafter referred to as SWUT), established in 2005, is a full-time private college. The university was funded by Shandong Huaxin Industry Co., Ltd. The Nobel Laureat Samuel C.C Ting was appointed honorary president. Upon being approved by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China in December 2018, the college was upgraded to an undergraduate-level vocational college.
Since its establishment, SWUT has adhered to the school administration concept “establishing the school based on teaching quality, developing with characteristics, innovating and exploring, benefiting the society”. Employing To be where you are, To go where you dream as the school motto, the college places high priority on moral education. It takes initiative to serve the regional economic development and innovation-driven development and exerts great effort to train urgently-needed qualified high-level and highly skilled personnel. It is the Shandong Key Outsourcing Service Talent Cultivation Base, the Research Base of Rizhao Export-oriented Economy Development and the Research Base of Rizhao Foreign Publicity. Over 100 prizes have been awarded to SWUT, such as the Most Characteristic Vocational College in Shandong Province and the College with the Best Social Reputation in Shandong Province.
The university covers an area of 682,400 square meters and a floor space of 350,300 square meters. The total value of the teaching instruments and equipment amounts to 75,446,300 yuan and the school library has a collection of over 1,154,400 volumes. The full-time teachers total 521. There are 115 experimental and training laboratories, including the Rizhao Digital Engineering Technology Research Center, an international business simulation laboratory, a simultaneous interpretation laboratory, and a digital media laboratory. To fully meet students’ needs for learning and training, SWUT has established cooperative partnerships with 262 enterprises, such as Dalian Commodity Exchange and Rizhao Bulk Commodity Exchange Center.
The university has five disciplines: Economics, Literature, Engineering, Management and Art, with 45 majors altogether, distributed among seven schools: the School of Foreign Languages, the School of Economics and Management, the School of International Business, the School of Information Engineering, the School of Aviation and Tourism, the School of International Studies and the School of Finance.
Through long term exploration, the university has gradually formed its own characteristics and strengths in running a school of its own kind.
The university has practiced the concept of serving the society. The college actively participates in social services based on its strengths. The first is to extensively carry out applied research. The university established the Rizhao Export-Oriented Economic Research Institute, the Financial Research Institute and other institutions. The second is to serve the society through providing consultation for various enterprises, free translation services for some social agecies and training for technical personnel and junior and senior high school English teachers.
The university has gotten rid of obstacles in carrying out the international schooling strategy of “Three Introductions+Three Outputs”. “Three Introductions” refer to introducing advanced international schooling ideas and managerial experience, international teaching resources and international students; “Three Outputs” refer to sending students to study abroad, sending students to work abroad and sending teachers to receive training abroad. The university has set up partnerships with over 90 universities and institutes from different countries and areas, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Australia and the non-profit institute SAF, and has carried out various types of international communication and cooperation, such as student-exchange, teacher-exchange, co-exploration of teaching materials and cooperative education. Diversified development in international communication and cooperation has offered powerful support for the “internationalization” strategy. The college was designated the “IELTS Recognizing Organization” and “Aptis Model School” by the British Council and was included in the “Top 50 National Vocational Colleges for International Influence”.
The university will grasp the chance for revolution of vocational education at the undergraduate level, maintain the feature and nature of vocational education and explore methods of vocational education at the undergraduate level with high quality and distinctive features. Sticking to the principal of “internationalization”, the college will diligently strive to make it a success so as to provide high quality service for a modernized vocational education system construction as well as for national and local economic development.
