About Us

The School of Art and Design, formerly the Department of Art and Design, was founded in 2003. In 2011, the department joined with the Humanities Department to create the School of Arts and Communications. In December 2019, to establish a more comprehensive subject system, the University began to gradually make adjustments to the structure of schools and departments. At the end of 2020, through restructuring, the School of Art and Design was founded. It is an integrated faculty with focuses on education, scientific research and social services, henceforth referred to as the School.

The School makes use of the University’s advantageous background in food and light industry production subjects, connecting design education with design industry in Hubei, with a focus on “Great Food, Great Health”. Utilizing design practices to benefit local economy, the School works to combine education, research and social services, building a system where multiple disciplines interact and fuse to create brand new possibilities, while facilitating the coordination of production, study, and research. Nurturing practical design capabilities and creative thinking in students is the focus, humanistic qualities and design theories are pillars of education, while design study and innovative entrepreneurship in the fields of design and health are the defining features. Together, the School teaches students to become competent designers with good qualities.

The school is located in the Jinyin Lake Campus of Wuhan Polytechnic University, a campus with great and unique natural scenery. It neighbors the beautiful Jinyin Lake Wetland Park, a national attraction. Line 2 and Line 6 of the subway run through the place, providing easy transportation to train stations all over the three districts of Wuhan, as well as a quick path to Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. Famous old urban street culture display district “Hankouli” and internationally acclaimed Wuhan Garden Expo park are both easily within reach. Fresh air, natural scenery, and easy transportation provide design students with a good environment for studying and living.

Subjects and Majors

The School currently provides four undergraduate majors: visual communication design, enviromental design, product design, and animation. It also has one authorization site for masters of “art and design” major. Among these, visual communication design and enviromental design major are both approved for development as provincial level first-class majors, while the visual communication major is rated five stars in the Evaluation Report for Chinese Universities, Subjects and Majors. The School is approved one Hubei Province outstanding base-level educational organization, and one provincial level outstanding teaching group.

In recent years, the School works to meet the socioeconomic development needs of both the national and the local, upholding the University’s educational ideology of “Cultivating Students Foremost, Founding School in Quality”. It pushes hard for the development of subjects, majors, and courses in trinity, nurturing talented individuals with higher qualities continually. The School pays special attention to societal needs when cultivating students, and makes dynamic adjustments to the development framework of the majors. It reorganizes the coursework system with mindsets that are goal-oriented, problem-oriented, and result-oriented, thus building the majors concretely and developing unique features for each gradually.

Faculty Makeup

The School of Art and Design now has 54 employees, 43 of them faculty members. Among which, 13 are young teachers under 35, 21 are between 46 to 55 years old, and one older than 56. There are 4 professors (9.3% of the faculty), 18 associate professors (41.9% of the faculty), 16 lecturers (37.2% of the faculty), and 5 teaching assistants (11.6% of the faculty). In the faculty, there are 5 doctors and doctoral candidates, as well as 5 teachers who graduated from internationally acclaimed universities with a doctor's degree or a master’s degree. Together, they form an education and research team with reasonable age, position, and degree makeup.

Coursework Development

The School puts the systemic and multidimensional development of coursework reform in high regard, and enthusiastically engages in building first-class courses and golden courses. The operations lead the four majors to implement information era core course series development project with clear goals, plans, and focuses, directed by their own talent nurturing plans for students. Fist-class majors are in great need of first-class courses; the School thus strengthens the development of first-class teaching group and enhances the quality of student cultivation through the development of first-class courses. The School of Art and Design has built its own online Chaoxing coursework database using the coursework resources gathered throughout the years, and has put forward separate development plans for school level, provincial level and national level quality courses. By 2021, 3 provincial level first-class courses have been approved to the School’s teachers, and 2 courses are in the process of application for national level quality courses.

Platform Building

The School pays great attention to the comprehensive cultivation of students’ knowledge, skills, and competence, pushing hard on platform building to facilitate student cultivation and scientific research. The School is equipped with 17 multifunctional laboratories, including advanced and multifunctional ceramic art design lab, woodworking crafts lab, silkscreen printing lab, rapid prototyping lab, visual communication design lab, creative digital art lab, interactive design lab, digital media lab, virtual studio lab, computer labs of the Art and Communication Experimentation and Education Center. Beyond that, there are also innovation and entrepreneurship studio for undergraduate students, as well as multiple studios for graduates, ensuring that undergraduates and graduates alike are able to engage in design practices and creative works freely. These platforms combine the functions of production, studying, research, practical usage, collaboration, and cultivation, and are playing increasingly important roles in regional culture building and modern industry development.

Student Cultivation

The School focuses on the cultivation of practical and innovative students with a goal-oriented approach. Students graduated from the School have good humanistic qualities, solid knowledge in respective fields, and strong creative capabilities. Their abilities have been tested by the society, and achievements have been made in fields related to design and creative industry. In recent years, teachers and students from the School won over 200 awards both domestically and internationally, including iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award, Advertisement Design Contest for College Students, and “Challenge Cup”. They posted or published over 100 research papers, literary works, and artistic works. Students graduated from the School maintain a first-time employment rate of over 94%. They are hard-working, eager to learn, and courageously innovative, earning unanimous praise from the employers.

Research Achievements

The School follows the University’s development focus of the fields of “food nutrient and human health”, fully applies its strength, and refines the development features of its subjects, making great advancement in research. In recent years, teachers of the School has taken charge of or participated in over 80 research projects of various levels and categories. Notably, the teachers hosted 2 National Social Science Fund projects, 2 humanities and social sciences projects from the Ministry of Education, 1 Hubei Province social sciences fund project, and over 30 other provincial level and prefecture level projects, receiving research funds of a grand total of over 3 million Yuan. Over 200 research papers, as well as over 30 books and textbooks are published, while many research findings are given provincial or municipal educational and research rewards.

Social Services

Cultural innovation, food innovation, and health design industries are in great need of competent individuals who are innovative and entrepreneurial for their development, whom the School strives to provide. The School therefore digs deep into the traditional cultural resources of Hubei Province, enthusiastically participates in the development of Hubei socioeconomic projects, and pushes educational reforms in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship through joint forces of universities, the government, and the society. The School pushes for practical usage of research findings, signing over 20 project contracts with companies, which cover many regions, including Hubei, Hunan, Shanxi, Beijing, Guangzhou, Guangxi, receiving funds of over 1.12 million Yuan. The School has undertaken many social and cultural development projects and local cultural attraction design projects in succession, including: Forum of the Famous project, China Railway 11 Bureau Group 3D virtual demonstration and verification project for the construction preview of extra large Jianghan bridge, command and training system for a division of the People's Liberation Army, command operation and training assessment software, Shanghai Anhan Medical Technology animation project for assisting medical reading process, firefighting system emulation model, fire emergency response model, fire and explosion prevention decision-making software, and development research of electricity simulation training equipment. In terms of educational projects, the School collaborates with many enterprises and institutions in Hubei, and establishes 16 practices and education bases outside the University. In coursework, the School collaborates with the University’s corresponding rural village in poverty reduction operations, and enthusiastically assists in the development of the village through ideas and hard work, lending its strength to facilitate the practical adaption of teaching outcomes and push for the conversion and advancement of local economy.

International Exchange and Communication

To further advance the reform of education and student cultivation model, and to nurture competent and creative individuals who would thrive internationally, the School enthusiastically pushes for collaboration in leading subjects with Southern Utah University in the US, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Teesside University in the UK, establishing undergraduates and graduates exchange program and joint master cultivation program. The School selects outstanding teachers who are youthful or in their prime, sending them to renowned foreign universities to engage in advanced studies and training. The School vigorously supports the teachers in actively participating in famous international academic conferences. This would help elite teachers develop international perspectives, recognize cutting edge academic knowledge, and improve academic and professional capabilities. Meanwhile, the School also invites renowned foreign experts to give lectures, teach classes, and hold international conferences. Teachers from the School and guest lecturers are able to build platforms for international academic activities together, which greatly enhance the School’s capabilities and competence in terms of scientific research, promote the development of majors and subjects, and advance scientific research development.