On May 26^th, as CUEB’s 60^th anniversary is coming, the Launch of the School of Foreign Studies & Forum on Foreign Language Disciplines was held in the Lecture Hall, Boxue Building. Party Secretary Ke Wenjin and President Wang Jiaqiong inaugurated the School of Foreign Studies (SFS). Professor Cheng Hong with SFS and Professor Xiang Mingyou, vice chairman of ELT Advisory Board under the Ministry of Education, delivered lectures at the conference.

In the Forum on Foreign Language Disciplines in the morning, Professor Cheng gave a lecture with the theme of “Scholarliness and Spiritual Pursuit”. Professor Cheng started with the life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the late eminent English scholar, and then she touched upon the philosophy of “the unity of man and nature” rooted in traditional Chinese classics. In the end, she expounded the three dimensions of nature writing---landscape, soundscape and soulscape, presenting the charm of nature writing to the faculty and students. She also encouraged the attendees to study and research with a peaceful mind, to feel nature with soul and to understand art from the perspective of nature, so as to achieve the harmony between man and nature. The lecture embodied Cheng’s four combinations in her ecological literature studies: theory and practice, Chinese and western literary theories, eco-text studies and eco-aesthetic criticism, as well as Chinese traditional culture and modern civilization.

In the afternoon, two sub-forums were held, namely, academic salon on nature writing and foreign language development forum.

By now, CUEB School of Foreign Studies has a staff team of 67 members, of whom 59 are full-time teachers. The School has three Bachelor’s programs: Business English, English (including Business English Translation and English & French) and French, 13 classes of foreign language majors, 1 professional master degree program (MTI) and 1 master degree program of the first-level discipline (foreign languages and literature).