On the morning of September 8, 2018, the new campus of Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) broke ground in the Nanjing Jiangbei New Area (NJNA). The ceremony was witnessed by alumni representatives and government officials from Nanjing and NJNA, as well as by all the university leaders, middle-level managers, faculty and student representatives of NAU.
Party Secretary Chen Ligen announced the start of the ground-breaking ceremony and joined other university leaders and invited guests to turn the first sod of the new campus.
President Zhou Guanghong delivered a speech at the ceremony. He said that the new campus, which is strategically significant for NAU’s development, has been a common dream of several generations of NAU people as well as a shared aspiration of the entire faculty, 30,000 students and 300,000 alumni.
The 1st phase of the new campus was approved by the Ministry of Education this past August, and its development has since been fast-tracked. President Zhou emphasized that the new campus will be a milestone in NAU’s history, symbolizing harmonious synergy, resource integration, complementarity and common development between NAU and the host city, as well as the perfect alignment of the university’s development with the city’s economic growth.
The leader from NJNA said that the new campus as an important outcome of university-city collaboration will help NJNA optimize its urban planning, accelerate the commercialization of scientific and technological innovations, attract research institutes and advance university-city partnership. Moreover, the project will also help improve the city’s reputation and development quality.
The leader from the contracting company pledged that they will leverage their superior technical and managerial expertise to build the new campus in accordance with high standards, with an aim to transform the project into a paradigm of innovation for business-university collaboration.
The faculty representative Wang Yuanchao, Dean of the College of Plant Protection, said that all faculty members are committed to NAU’s century-old mission to improve the quality of talent development and research as part of their contribution to the development of the new campus.
Following the concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing, the new campus will be developed around the needs of the faculty, students and academic development. It will be planned, designed and built in accordance with high standards as an ecological, smart and innovative campus. According to the master plan, the new campus will be zoned in the format of a cell group, with landscaping designs perfectly harmonized with educational facilities to best satisfy the educational, research and life needs of the faculty and students.