Introduction of Teaching and Experiment Center in School of Bioscience and Bioengineering
The bioengineering specialty in SCUT has a long history of more than 50 years. In 2004, the university adjusted subjects and added a new science major, biological science. Based on the optimization and reorganization of original disciplines, Teaching and Experiment Center of School of Bioscience and Bioengineering was established in July, 2004. It locates in south campus of South China University of Technology. Since establishment of the Center, the School has insisted on the running concept of “Uphold engineering characteristics, and strengthen science studies”. Thus, the Center mainly serves teaching plan, undertakes teaching tasks of university, reforms the management system, and improves the teaching quality. Under the premise of the completion of basic teaching tasks, the Center has undertaken actively many national, provincial and municipal programs, carried out series of scientific and technological innovation activities, and taken full advantage of academic dominance to enhance activity of disciplines.
Currently the Center possesses 8 teaching laboratories. They are biochemistry and molecular biology laboratory, microbiology laboratory, cell biology laboratory, modern biochemistry technology laboratory, biopharmaceutical analysis laboratory, fermentation engineering laboratory,
biopharmaceutical technology and equipment laboratory, biomedical engineering laboratory. Basing on the construction of "985" industrial biotechnology science and technology innovation base, there are 9 function laboratories: biochemical engineering laboratory, fermentation engineering laboratory, protein scientific laboratory, microbe metabolism laboratory, molecular biology and genomics laboratory, cytobiology laboratory, bioinformatics and biochip laboratory, biomedical engineering and testing laboratory. The Center covers an area of about 5000 square meters. In order to better facilitate the research work, many laboratories have equipped with an independent conventional teaching apparatus and a certain amount of advanced equipments, of
which 23 are large-scale equipments worthy of more than 100,000 RMB each. They are PCR Instrument, high speed freezing centrifuge, biomacromolecule chromatographic system, UV-Visible Spectrophotometer (UV-Vis), multi-functional Inverted Microscope, physiological data acquisition and analysis System, digital Mutual System, Microorganism Fermentation Equipment, biomedicine and pharmaceutical pilot equipment, etc. Moreover, there are about more than 2000 teaching apparatus in total worth of approximately 20 million RMB. The Center can provide an experiment platform for students in pairs and meanwhile hold 300 students to practise kinds of experiment. With the increasing of teaching workload year by year, the utilization rate of equipments is highly up to 94% and perfectness ratio reaches to more than 95%.
Based on the construction of the south campus and academic disciplines, the Center has become advanced independence unit which has reasonable overall arrangement、advanced facilities, excellent research teams, scientific management system and outstanding teaching fruits. Up to now, there are 30 faculty and staff members in all, including 7 professors, 11 associate professors and 12 lecturers, of which 15 members below 45-year-old have Ph.D. degree and 5 members have master’s degree. In recent years, the Center has accomplished its task of providing laboratory equipments and teaching environment for over 500 undergraduates from School of Bioscience & Bioengineering and also 400 students from other schools. The workload is up to 70 thousand hours every year. The Center is scheduled in full, operates efficiently, and plays a great role in research and experiment teaching.
The Center implements the management from School and university, under the leadership of director. Faculties、finances and equipments are centralized to manage and distribute, which truly makes resources share. The Human-centered and “Precise、Exquisite、Effective” management model are embodied in the construction of environment. The Center will further set up networking and information-based management platform to carry out more effective operation mechanism of running for a whole day.
Since established in 2004, the Center always follows a talent cultivation guideline of "Strengthening basic research, Widening knowledge, Cultivating capability, Encouraging personality, Improving quality". Its aim is to raise more and more talents who own solid specialty foundation, independent manipulate and activated innovative thinking. It provides humanistic environment for student, and insists on its teaching idea of imparting knowledge, cultivating capability and enhancing quality through the whole teaching process. From the perspective of personnel training system, it takes fostering students’ ability and innovation as the core, and set up innovative experiment teaching system which is multi-level, cross-union and systemic. Comprehensive, innovative and experimental design is up to more than 35 % of all experiment curriculums. Combining scientific research and engineering with social application, the Center has undertaken 30 projects and published 25 teaching textbooks. Moreover, the Center has established rich resources of network course and network interaction system, such as Modern industrial microbiology and Enzyme engineering, and also has completed the evaluation system of experiment teaching effect by using the methods of follow-up investigation, network feedback and informal discussion between teachers and students. In addition to follow the teaching guideline, the Center has provided undergraduates with experiment practice platform of design experiment, SRP research experiment and innovation research experiment of school projects.
With the efforts for many years, the Center has gained remarkable achievements. Two courses, Modern industrial microbiology and Enzyme engineering, edited by faculties of the Center, are awarded Excellent Courses in Guangdong Province. Furthermore, achievements in scientific research, such as biochemistry and molecular biology, have been awarded High-quality curriculums of University.
In recent 3 years, faculties have undertaken”973” and ”863” Program, the 10th Five-Year Plan, the 11th Five-Year Plan, and many other programs supported by National and Provincial Natural Science Funds, provincial and municipal essential programs. In addition, they acquire a number of major results of scientific research, some of which have a significant economic impact.
From now on, the Center will keep on improving condition of experiment and education, and also reforming further experimental teaching system, management system and running mode. In order to cultivate innovative talents in bioscience field in the 21st century, the Center will step to perfect experimental facilities, advanced experimental materials, scientific teaching system, reasonable team structure and complete information.
