Northwest University for Nationalities was established in August 1950, directly under the leadership of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. It was the first minorities’ university following the founding of the PRC. Wang Feng who was a proletarian revolutionary of the older generation was appointed the first chief. The predecessor of the school was the Lanzhou branch of the Northwest People’s Revolution University. From February1950, Northwest University for Nationalities became established on its current foundations. In April of 2003, with the approval of the Ministry of Education and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, it was renamed Northwest University for Nationalities.
Northwest University for Nationalities is divided into two campuses. The original campus in Cheng Guan and the new campus in Yu Zhong, covering an area of 2880 Chinese mu. After 60 years of continuous development, the school has formed a co-ordinated strategy with undergraduate courses as its main focus, while also offering postgraduate courses, preparatory courses, continuing & vocational education and international education. This university offers comprehensive multi-disciplinary classes at three levels of bachelors, masters, and doctoral. So far it has cultivated more than 80,000 all types of talent for the country.
Based in Northwest China, the university has enrolled students from 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, with a total number of 19,000 students of 55 nationalities. There are 1508 staff members of whom there are 890 full-time teachers, 272 associate professors, 169 professors and 11 doctoral tutors.
The school attaches great importance to the teaching of undergraduate courses, and the position of teaching is preeminent. It obtained a rating of “Excellent” in undergraduate course teaching during an appraisal by the Ministry of Education in 2007.
Since its establishment, the school has offered undergraduate courses in 54 specialized subjects in 11disciplines: Philosophy, Economics, Law, Educational Sciences, Literature, Historiography, Science, Engineering, Agronomy, Medicine and Management Science. Master’s degrees are offered in 31 subjects and doctor’s degree in one. Among these there are 3 key disciplines of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and 4 key disciplines of Gansu Province.
The school first awarded master's degrees in 1981. In 2003, it conferred its first doctorate .The school declared a policy on “recommending outstanding undergraduate students to study master's degree with exemption from examination” and this was successfully carried out in 2008. Meanwhile, the school has obtained the enrolment qualification of doctor’s and master’s degrees “high level key personnel of the ethnic minority training plan”.
There are 25 faculties and departments, a network & information management center and an experimental center. The school has key laboratories in the “Chinese Ethnic Minority Information Technology Research Institute” and the “Animal Cell Project Engineering Research Institute of Gansu Province” which were constructed by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and Ministry of Education. Among them, there are 4 key laboratories of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission.
At present, the library boasts a collection of about 2.21 million books: 1,370,000 paper books and 840,000 electronic books. The University Museum contains around 1,500 cultural and historical relics, of which there are 117 state third-class cultural relics. The books,reference materials and the collection of cultural relics have vivid national characteristics.
Importance has been attached to display superiority in scientific research, and remarkable achievements have been attained. Since the year 2000, the university has assumed over 603 key research projects, among which 52 projects are sponsored by “National Plan 863 Projects”, National Natural Science Funds, National Social Science Funds, and Key Philosophy and Social Science Topics of the Ministry of Education. Achievements in scientific research have obtained 34 awards at state-level and 200 at provincial-level. These include the “Tibetan-Chinese Bilingual Word Information Processing System”, and “Tibetan Windows Platform, Character Disposal Software and Tibetan Website” which won second prize in The National Science and Technology Progress Prize in 1999 and in 2001 respectively. It has received strong approval from Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and other national leaders in the Communist Party of China. The school has also established the world's first Tibetan website on the internet.
The school organized the editing and publication of "Tibetan Documents in French Collections” and "Tibetan Documents in British Collections" will be published soon. This has realized the return and reappearance in the world of precious historical documents of this country, and has evoked strong responses in academic circles, as milestones of Dunhuang and Tibetan Studies.
The university always puts moral education in the first place and has pushed forward national unity and progress, sticking to the principle of “imparting education and cultivating people”. The school believe national unity is of prime importance, pursue, gathering nationality culture, displaying the superiority of multi-cultural coexistence, carrying out education for the national unity progress, and diligently advancing the progress of national unity. The State Council has twice recognized the university as a “Model Unit for Nationality Unity and Progress”.
