On 15th October, the quiet Sunday campus of Columbia University hided a bustling conference hall in the International Relations Building, where a job fair of Wuhan University was on.
“We hope to attract the most talented ones and enable them to realize their dreams in the beautiful campus of Wuhan University.” Dou Xiankang, president of Wuhan University, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency.
When it came to this trip to the US, President Dou went straight to the point that “The best trainers for the best trainees” has always been the fine tradition and footstone of WHU’s development. Meanwhile, the Unite State is the paradise for excellent young overseas scholars, which therefore, was selected by Dou as the first destination of the overseas scholars recruitment plan shortly after his taking office.
Dou made MIT in Boston the first stop of his trip in the US and the job fair there was a big success. Then his team resumed their journey to New York to hold another fair in Columbia University with the assistance of Education Group of Consulate General in New York and Greater New York Wuhan University Alumni Association. Afterwards, they flew to San Francisco in the same afternoon and held another two job fairs in UC Berkeley and Stanford University on 16th October.
The three destinations were chosen after calculating consideration, according to Dou. MIT is renowned for Engineering and Computer Science; New York is the international financial hub for talents in finance, law and art; and San Francisco is the birthplace of Silicon Valley, where high-tech workers cluster. As a comprehensive university, WHU needs talents from all walks of life. Therefore, the job fairs are launched in these three universities, and later Dou's team will reinforce their talent recruitment in Europe.
"After all, the building of first-class universities and disciplines highly relies on top-notch talents, whose ability determines the quality of universities", Dou say. Hence, Wuhan University set 2017 as the “the Year of Strengthening Universities by Talents”, hoping to reinforce the fostering and importing of the talent. “We plan to introduce about 300 young and middle-aged talents within 5 years,” President Dou revealed.
Dou names this recruitment plan “building a nest to attract a phoenix”, that is, Wuhan University will positively introduce the overseas talents (the phoenixes) and plans to construct tailored research and teaching platforms for them. WHU will reasonably allocate resources according to the specific needs of these introduced talents and make itself a high-level talent pool.
After the arrival of the talent, a new problem occurs: how should we encourage them to stay here and progress together with the university? President Dou, who got his PhD abroad, explains with his own experiences that the priority of the talent work is to nurture a campus culture where scholars and academics are respected so that they develop their sense of belongings and shared values.
As for the facilities, Wuhan University now is equipped with 2 National High-end Think Tanks, 2 National Collaborative Innovation Centers, 3 Academies of Interdisciplinary Sciences, 4 nationally first-ranked disciplines and 5 National Key Laboratories. All these will undoubtedly provide first-class platforms for overseas talents' development.
Moreover, WHU will guarantee the introduced talents full material support. Accordingly, a Talent and Expert Office was set up to facilitate the talent importing, fostering and serve them in an all-round manner. These top-notch talents will enjoy high salaries, free housing and medical insurance in WHU. Besides, their spouses’ career and children’s education are also fully considered.
In order to gain sufficient financial supports, WHU has founded a “Fund for Talent Importing”. Dou introduced, in the past 9 months, WHU has received an alumni donation of 150 million Yuan and there will be an expanding fund to 500 million Yuan, with which WHU can introduce more talented people with sufficient money and in a more flexible way.
Apart from “importing”, WHU has also adopted a cultivation policy to “export” the talent with global vision. It plans to send 300 to 500 young and medium-aged visiting scholars or post doctors to world first-class academic and research institutions for cooperative researches of high quality for one or two years. The plan aims to cultivate the young or medium-aged academic leaders. “A university’s improvement trough talents” has become a consensus among teachers and students of Wuhan University.
Wuhan University is listed as a “Double First-class A” university with a brand new opportunity for development. “It is the renowned scholars and masters more than great buildings that determine a university’s taste and standing”, Dou said. Therefore, his top priority now is to absorb, respect, serve and foster talents.
(Rewritten by Lingling Zheng, Edited by Shen Yuxi, Hu Sijia)
