School of Foreign Studies
The School of Foreign Studies (SFS), originally the second Department of the Beijing Foreign Trade College founded in 1954, is composed of eight departments and one center, namely, Departments of Arabic, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Vietnamese, as well as the Sino-Italian Language Training Center. In its history of half a century, there appeared many known scholars and professors: Chen Tao, Song Wenjun, Shen Daming, Zhang Xiongwu, Zhao Run, Jiang Xindao, Xiao Tianyou, among others.
Up till now, about one thousand undergraduates and one hundred post graduates have finished their studies and are now working in various trades both home and abroad. Many of them have grown to be either the pillars or heads of their working units: Shi Guangsheng as the ex-minister of Foreign Trades, Song Hai, now the vice provincial governor of Guangdong Province, Cao Weizhou, the deputy Secretary-General of the National Standing Committee of People’s Congress of China, Guo Li, the deputy director of the Hongkong Liaison Office of China, to name just a few.
The eight departments of the School are all members and /or standing members of their separate National Teaching Associations and Literature Societies. Some of the School professors are coordinators of these organizations.
The SFS boasts of highly qualified teaching and research faculties. Of 80 members, 21 are full professors, 33 associate professors. Among them, 34 are graduate supervisors, 21 have obtained PhD degrees. Each year, the SFS also employs some foreign teachers to help students acquire language skills.
The students of the SFS come from all over China with good abilities and competence. The total numbers of undergraduate and graduate students add up to 700 and 100 respectively. Those who have graduated are warmly welcomed due to the sophisticated bilingual training programs by the SFS.
Over the past five decades, the SFS has established a good relationship with many overseas universities, many SFS faculty members have benefited from the exchange programs with 20 overseas universities.
