At the beginning of the new year, the Ningbo Municipal Education Bureau announced the list of approved projects for the “Project 161” for university discipline and major development. Our university’s Bioengineering was approved as a Ningbo Peak Discipline, and four disciplines—Intelligent Science and Technology, Information and Communication Engineering, Environmental Science and Engineering, and Management Science and Engineering—were approved as Advantageous and Featured A-level disciplines. Design was approved as an Advantageous and Featured A-level (Cultivation) discipline, while Food Science and Engineering, Aquaculture, Materials Science and Engineering, and Law were approved as Advantageous and Featured B-level disciplines. This round saw breakthroughs in the Peak Discipline category, with both the number and quality of city-level disciplines being enhanced, ranking second in the city for the number of approved disciplines.

Our university’s Biotechnology, IoT Engineering, and Logistics Management programs were approved as Brand Programs, while Data Science and Big Data Technology, Accounting, Exhibition Economics and Management, Food Quality and Safety, and Intellectual Property were approved as First-Class Programs. Artificial Intelligence was approved as an Emerging Program.

In recent years, the university has deeply implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speeches on building a strong education country and the spirit of the National Education Conference, and seriously followed the provincial and municipal government’s plans for strengthening higher education. The university has vigorously supported the high education strategy of “striving for excellence, creating models, and writing new chapters” and accelerated the establishment of doctoral degree-granting institutions. The university has always regarded discipline development as a core task of its growth. It focuses precisely on meeting the needs of regional economic and social development, strengthens the connotation construction of disciplines comprehensively, and adheres to a differentiated approach to discipline development. The university emphasizes application-oriented discipline features and has built a “province-city-university” three-level discipline development system, strengthening the leading role of discipline construction in the development of degree programs. It has increased investment in discipline development, actively introduced and cultivated high-level talent, and built high-level disciplines and research platforms. The university continues to promote interdisciplinary integration and innovation, providing a solid foundation for the development of city peak disciplines and advantageous and featured disciplines. At the same time, the university has made solid progress in building first-class programs, implementing performance evaluations based on goals and outcomes, and building internationalized, industry-education-integrated, and innovation-driven programs with distinct features and advantages, yielding fruitful results in program development. In this round of municipal key program applications, the university recommended 10 programs and successfully had 9 approved.

The university will use the approval of city peak disciplines, advantageous and featured disciplines, and key programs as an opportunity to further strengthen the organization and leadership of discipline and program development. It will urge each discipline to focus on enhancing its advantageous and featured fields, continually increasing the influence and competitiveness of disciplines, and improving the social reputation, student quality, and employment outcomes of programs. The university will continue advancing toward the goal of establishing a doctoral degree-granting institution and laying a solid foundation for the comprehensive development of a top-tier, internationally renowned high-level applied university.