On September 26, 2009 “Boya Class” of Sun Yat-sen University had its Opening Ceremony held on the East Campus. People attending the ceremony included Cheng Huanwen, Dean of the College of Communication and Design and one of the leaders for the "Boya Class” project, deputy deans in charge of curriculums from various schools, and over 100 freshmen chosen for the “Boya Class”. The ceremony was hosted by the Deputy Director of the University Dean’s Office.
At the ceremony, Professor Cheng Huanwen presented the background and significance of launching “Boya Education Program” as an innovative project on comprehensive teaching reform on a joint effort by Lingnan Foundation of the United States and Sun Yat-sen University. He said that it was an integral part of “SYSU Boya Education Program” to set up the “Boya Class”. It aims at operating a kind of new mechanism in the field of humanities and social sciences, which combines various reforms involving subject categories cultivation, cross-disciplinary teaching, internationalized schooling, research teaching as well as practice teaching and so on, into one set. And the new mechanism helps solve the problems in undergraduate teaching, such as over-emphasizing on professional teaching while relatively lack of practice teaching, limited scopes of knowledge of students and poor ability in innovation and practice. Professor Cheng also read out the congratulatory letter from the Lingnan Foundation of the United States.
Meanwhile, Professor Luo Yiping, the representative teacher of ‘Boya Class’, offered his understanding of “Boya Education”. Student representative Li Yangyang from 2008 “Boya Class” recounted the learning experiences over the year and displayed through multi-media Boya’s summer holiday practice lesson, “Lingnan Garden Impression”. Finally, on behalf of all the freshmen of the “2009 Boya Class”, Lin Mengtong gave a short speech, that they will cherish the favorable teaching environment offered by the university, improve their knowledge structure, and enhance their comprehensive ability.
