On July 31st of 2014, School of Economics and Management held the kickoff meeting on self-assessment for academic graduate program with participants including directors and assistant directors of Graduate Education Steering Committees for three first-level disciplines in the school, 15 persons in charge for the degree program and whole staff of the graduate division, which was hosted by Cui Yongmei - assistant dean of SEM and directed by Sheng Lihui - assistant dean of graduate school.
Combining "Basic Requirements for Ph.D & Master Degree of the First-level Discipline" enacted by State Council Office of Academic Degrees and policing methods for assessment on degree program, Sheng Lihui conveyed relevant requirements and assessment arrangements at national level and school level, highlighted the important meaning of self-assessment for development of school's disciplines, progress of majors and personnel training, hoped the school and teachers to hold sense of mission and crisis, encouraged everyone to promote construction through assessment which shall be based on national standards, focus on reflection of traditional disciplines and advantages and features of Beijing Jiaotong University, and conducted thorough communication with participants of the meeting.
Cui Yongmei expressed her gratitude to everyone for the hard work and achievements having been made on personnel training, elaborated the significance of conducting qualification assessment for degree program combining with "Method for Qualification Assessment on Degree Authorization" issued by Ministry of Education, and described the assessment mode, contents and procedures in details, based on which officially launched the self-assessment for degree program and arranged the formulation of qualified standards for degree assessment on the basis of first-level discipline and time nodes for completion, modification and diagnosis of the self-assessment report.
All participants learned and discussed graduate training policies at national level and school level including "Spot-check Approach for Doctor & Master Thesis", "Methods of Implementation on Post-assessment for Academic Thesis of Beijing Jiaotong University", "Mentor Manual" and "Graduate Handbook". In addition, Education Steering Committees for first-level disciplines conducted group discussions, deliberated problems in the training process of graduate students, further divided the tasks for specific implementation of works on degree evaluation criteria and self-assessment and assigned the tasks to individuals.
"Method for Qualification Assessment on Degree Authorization" issued by Ministry of Education is to guide the training organization to transfer from previous mode of accepting assessment in passive manners into a mode of conducting active and initiative internal assessment on a regular basis, strengthen the construction of regular internal quality assurance system, where the government-led conducting part has been transferred into training organization to conduct self-assessment, giving full play to the role of third-party peer experts. SEM attached great importance to self-assessment on degree program. This meeting is the first plenary session after the meeting for directors of Graduate Education Steering Committees held on July 3rd.
