Tsinghua International Graduate School at Shenzhen (Phase I) Project officially initiated

On May 7th, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Tsinghua International Graduate School at Shenzhen (Phase I) Project (the campus of Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute) took place in Shenzhen.

Chen Rugui, the Mayor of Shenzhen, Gao Zimin, the Vice Mayor of Shenzhen, Qiu Yong, the President of Tsinghua University, You Zheng, the Vice President of Tsinghua, and Carol T. Christ, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, together attended the ceremony, which was hosted by Zhang Lin, the Co-Director of the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute.

In his address, Qiu Yong extended his thanks to the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government, the University of California, Berkeley, and people in varied sections of society for their long-term care and support for Tsinghua.

He noted that since Tsinghua and Shenzhen’s joint establishment of the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen in 1996, Tsinghua and the city in southern China have achieved many firsts. In 2001, Tsinghua and Shenzhen co-founded the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, which was Tsinghua’s first graduate school outside Beijing. In 2014, the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute was founded, and in 2016, Tsinghua signed an agreement with Shenzhen with the intention of establishing the Tsinghua International Graduate School at Shenzhen.

Qiu also noted that the Graduate School has three defining characteristics – it is international, innovative, and committed to the training of top-tier creative talents. He believed that in the future, the Tsinghua International Graduate School at Shenzhen would definitely accomplish fruitful outcomes in its internationalization, the achievement of innovative results, and the education of creative talents.

Chancellor Carol Christ noted that the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, as an institution co-founded by two outstanding universities of their respective countries, has in the past few years testified to its robust strength in nurturing talents and gathering excellent faculty members. The launching of the construction project of the new campus constitutes a new starting point for Tsinghua’s international education.

Zhang Lin noted that the initiation of the project signifies that Tsinghua has entered a new historical stage in its collaborative education in Shenzhen. The School will contribute to the implementation of Tsinghua’s Global Strategy and Shenzhen’s construction of its international higher education system.

It is estimated that the Tsinghua International Graduate School at Shenzhen (Phase I) will be inaugurated in 2021.

Writer: Zhu Lvhe

Visual design: Yang Siwei