Programs and Specialties
School of Geography and Tourism offers four Bachelor’s degree programs including Geography Science, Geographic Information System, Tourism Management, and Surveying and Mapping Engineering. Among them, Geography Science was awarded the provincial characteristic specialty, Tourism Management is the key specialty of NYNU, and Human geography is the key disciplines of NYNU. The school have subdivisions as four Teaching and Research sections (Geography Science, Geographic Information System, Tourism Management, and Surveying and Mapping Engineering), three Research Institutions (research centre for region sustainable development, land resource research centre, and Dushan jade culture research centre), and a training centre (Tourism Training Center of Nanyang). The school now has fifteen laboratories, which cover 1545 square meters and are equipped with modern instrument of the total value of 2,147,000 Yuan, including Physical Geography Laboratory, Geographical Information System Laboratory, Remote Sensing Image Laboratory, Guest Room Practice, Chinese Restaurant Practice and Western Restaurant Practice, Shape-up Exercise Room, Guestroom Simulation Laboratory, Restaurant Simulation Laboratory, Tour Guide Simulation Laboratory, Computer Room, Chinese Jade Culture Museum, Gem Testing Room, Jade Sculpture Process Design, and Dinosaur Egg Geological Museum. “Gem and Jade Appreciation”, “Tourism planning”, and “Tourism Science” are chosen as University Excellent Courses, “Economic Geography”, “Tourism Regulations”, “Tourism Planning and Management”, “Tourguide Service”, “Human geography”, “Principal and Method of Geographic Information System”, and “Principal and Method of Remote Sensing” are seven network courses. The school has a good scientific research tradition and the spirit of innovation. Based on the existing conditions and curriculum system, in accordance with the basic content of the professional construction and personnel training objectives, the school is gradually developing, improving and optimizing the relevant factors of the combination of courses, meanwhile, combined with the education reform of the university, geography curriculum serves as the backbone, while tourism and geographic information system curriculum as a platform in Curriculum Provision, reflecting multidisciplinary comprehensive and cross feature.
Geography Science
The Provincial Characteristic Specialty is a four-year undergraduate program of Teacher Education. The program aims to help students grasp fundamental theories, knowledge and basic skills in geographical specialty, obtain strong analytical and problem solving skills, and become qualified secondary school educators.
Main courses: An Introduction to Earth, Cartography, Geology, Remote Sensing Principle and Method, Physical Geography, Human Geography, Quantitative Geography, Geographical Information System, Regional Economics, Urban Planning, Chinese Geography, World Geography, Higher Mathematics, and others.
Geographic Information System
GIS is a newly emerging interdisciplinary subject over the last two decades, which integrates Geography, Computer, Remote Sensing Technology and Cartography, it provides students with a fundamental education relating to Geographic Information Science and Cartography. Students trained as such are expected to be professionals in doing scientific research and teaching jobs in scientific research institution or colleges, and have capacity of working at applied research, technological development, production management and public administration and others.
Main courses: physical geography, human geography, economic geography, cartography, remote sensing technology, database technology, geographic information system principle, design and application of geographic information system, and program language related discipline.
Tourism Management
Tourism Management is a four-year undergraduate program. It aims to help students gain knowledge and enhance their capacity in the following aspects: grasp fundamental theories and knowledge in Tourism Management, get familiar with national policies and regulations on tourism development, know the latest development in tourist industry, acquire basic skills of theoretical analysis and problem solving ability by using Tourism Management theories, and have professional capacity of working at tourism administration, enterprise and public institution.
Main courses: Introduction to Tourism, Tour Guide business, Tourism Marketing, Travel Agency Management, An introduction to hotel management, Tourist Policies and Regulations, tourism resources employment and program, tourism information system, and others.
Surveying and Mapping Engineering
Surveying and Mapping Engineering is a four-year undergraduate program. The program aims to help students grasp fundamental theories, knowledge in the surface, underground and space three-dimensional digital surveying and mapping, precise engineering survey and deformation monitoring, space geodetic surveying, digital photogrammetry, satellite remote sensing, and cartographic compilation, students are expected to gain capacity in spatial information collection, processing and application, and be able to carry out research, management, and teaching in vehicle navigation and management of Armed Forces, Urban planning and construction, Mineral resources exploration and development, Investigation and management of land and resources, Design implementation and research of Maps and geographic information system as senior engineering and technical personnel.
Main courses: surveying, geodesy, cadastral surveying and land management, theory of errors and survey adjustment, photogrammetry, Control surveying, engineering surveying and others.
School characteristic
1. Geographical science—provincial characteristic specialty
Geographical science is in the first batches of upgraded specialty of NYNU, it began to recruit geographical science majors in 2000, admitting students from twenty-one provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions nationwide, it currently has 235 full-time undergraduate students. The major has cultivated over 330 graduates, which have been in short supply. In recent years, the fresh graduate employment rate of this major is 100%, Of these, 33?9% continued to graduate study in top universities such as Zhejiang University, Nanjing University, China University of Geosciences, Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, and Lanzhou University.
The school has a good scientific research tradition and the spirit of innovation. Students are encouraged to participate in teachers’ scientific research project, meanwhile, inspiring students to set up project independently; teachers and students could also carry on research together through project establishment (SPT project). In recent years, a number of students have taken an active part in all kinds of competition organized in the nation, Henan province, and the university, and the number of winners reaches twenty-five, of which, four students are awarded the third prize in the first National Map GIS Contest, three are awarded the first prize in lesson presentation contest of Henan province, one silver award in Business Plan Competition of Henan province, one third prize and one second prize in National Science and Technology College of extra-curricular academic competition, and two third prize in the science and art festival of Henan province.
The specialty has a reasonably structured high-quality faculty team. At present, there are twenty-nine full-time teachers, of whom there are five full professors and seven associate professors, 41.4% of them are with senior titles, one post-doctoral scholar, two doctoral degree holders, seventeen masters’ degree holders, and two on-job doctorate. The specialty has employed one academician from HUST, two part-time professors from CCNU and Henan University respectively, and one researcher from Henan Academy of Sciences. Four full-time teachers has been awarded academic leader of education department of Henan, and the other four has been identified as the young and middle-aged backbone teachers of Henan, there are two top ten teacher’s ethics model of Henan, two excellent tutor award, one Prominent Educator of NYNU, one prominent educator target of NYNU, and three rising star educator of NYNU. “Human Geography” is the key disciplines of NYNU. The teaching staff of this major was confirmed as “Provincial Level Teaching Team” of Henan.
The specialty now has seven laboratories (Physical Geography Laboratory, Geographical Information System Laboratory, Remote Sensing Image Laboratory, Computer Room, Dushan Jade Culture Research Centre Laboratory, Satellite Remote Sensing Laboratory, and Dinosaur Egg Geological Museum), five field practice bases( Danjiangkou regional economic geography practice base, Taocha tourism planning base, Danjiang reservoir area ecological environment and regional sustainable development base, Tongbaishan soil and vegetation base, Songshan geology and landform base, and hydrology base), and four scientific research institutions(Regional sustainable development research institute, Dushan jade culture research center, institute of land and resources, and remote sensing application and disaster research center.).The complete laboratory equipment condition provides sufficient assurance for the academic research and teaching of geographical science.
The school utilizes the advantages of this specialty to serve local social economy. It has finished a well-off village construction planning of Xinye County, overall tour plan of Danjiangkou Reservoir, tourism planning of Chisingtan of Neixiang County, tourism planning of the zhoujia village Great Wall built by Chu in the Period of Warring States, it further more received good reputation through participating in the research project “ecological environment protection and management of Danjiangkou Reservoir water source”, in which, the state science and technology cooperated with the United Nation’s agency for science and technology development.
2. Provincial Level Teaching Team
Human Geography teaching team of School of Geography and Tourism is approved by Henan Province Department of Education in December 2007 as the first batches of construction projects in Henan province. Under the leadership of professor Geng-he Gao and professor Chang-yun Liu, the project actively explore teaching reform of human geography in geography science, geographical information system and tourism management, through optimizing management mechanism, advocating scientific innovation, promoting the teaching reform, attaching great importance to team construction, strengthening efforts in foreign exchange, the team construction has achieved obvious results.
The team has obtained a series of fruitful research achievements through two years’ construction. Since 2008, the team members have published forty-seven research theses, including thirty-three National Core Periodicals, fifteen secondary or above National Core Periodicals. Five articles were included by SCI, EI, and ISTP. Three academic monographs were published, including one chief editor Textbook. Nine scientific research projects were completed, in which, five are at or above the provincial level. One research project was awarded the second Prize of Henan Provincial Association of Social Sciences
At the same time of conducting scientific research, team members actively carry out teaching research and have obtained considerable results, since 2008, team members have published four teaching research articles and five textbooks, and have completed one research project. Two courses have been established as Distinguished Courses of NYNU.
The team emphasizes acquainting and summarizing the objective law of teaching, and attaches importance to putting forward problems in teaching practice and specifying reform mentality, meanwhile, we apply the existing research results to teaching practice so as to further promote the teaching reform and improve teaching level effectively. We particularly emphasis on the promotion effect of scientific research for teaching, and encourage teachers to combine scientific research and teaching organically, transform the scientific research achievements into valuable teaching resources to achieve all-round improvement of academic level, teaching effect, scientific research ability, and practical experience.
The team has set up three-stage teaching system with the combination of professional core curriculum, elective courses and lectures on frontier discipline to meet the needs of students’ interests and their personal development; and has set up professor demonstration class and system of attending a lecture to cultivate young teachers’ teaching ability and standard. With the combination of STP scientific research project, we have set up “Interest Group” to absorb undergraduate students into research projects, and have actively organized students to participate in various levels of skills competition, and they obtained proud achievements. In the course teaching of “humanistic geography” and “economic geography”, on the one hand, we emphasize the collocation of the old and new professors or associate professors, to ensure the quality of teaching, on the other hand, according to the characteristics of the contemporary undergraduate students, we understand their needs to the course through teaching, guide them to establish interests, and search the breach of teaching reform.
Relying on the advantages of provincial characteristic specialty (geographical science and tourism management), team members actively communicate with well-known scholars; meanwhile, based on the policy of the school, we attract talents in teaching and scientific research at home and abroad.
By strictly implementing undergraduate teaching system of professors, all professors in the team can successfully accomplish the teaching workload. Since its construction, we have selected two young teachers to study for a doctorate and have actively recruited relevant professional doctoral students. During construction, a total of five teachers completed the title promotion, including one professor, one associate professor, and three lecturers. These measures make the team and the echelon structure further improved.
In terms of teaching staff construction, we have improved the comprehensive level of the teaching staff through expanding external exchange, organizing and attending high level academic conference, and holding academic forum, have respectively attended a series of high level academic Conference such as The International Disaster and Risk Conference(SGCEG)，and also have invited many well-known scholars to hold academic lectures.
Human Geography Teaching Team of School of Geography and Tourism is advancing in giant strides toward the rising sun.
3. Provincial key laboratory——natural disaster remote sensing monitoring laboratory
The natural disaster remote sensing monitoring laboratory was founded in 1998 under its original name “GIS and remote sensing experiment teaching center”, the university has invested over eight hundred thousand Yuan in the establishment of remote sensing cartography laboratory and GIS laboratory, then to meet the requirement of GIS specialty, the university invested over six hundred thousand Yuan in the establishment of surveying and mapping engineering laboratory, in order to promote school teaching and high-level scientific research, the university further invested more than one million Yuan to establish remote sensing application and disaster research laboratory in 2007, purchased satellite ground receiving station; in December 2009, it was defined as “key laboratory of remote sensing for disaster reduction of Nanyang” after expert evaluation by Nanyang science and technology bureau. After becoming provincial key laboratory base of Henan Provincial Department of Education in 2012, it was renamed as “provincial key laboratory of natural disaster remote sensing monitoring”.
The laboratory has reasonable personnel structure with a total of sixteen members. (Holders of masters’ degree or above account for 87.5%, members with senior titles account for 34.5%, members under the age of 45 account for 87.5%).
Laboratory Chief, Professor Guangmeng Guo, has overall responsibility for the laboratory. As an important base of experimental teaching and talents cultivation of our school, the laboratory bears experimental teaching tasks of undergraduate courses of four specialties (Geographical Science, GIS, Surveying and Mapping Engineering and Tourism Management), it also takes the experimental teaching and the scientific research for second Bachelor’s degree and public elective courses of the university( such as satellite remote sensing and global positioning technology, digital information processing, etc.) The laboratory has completed more than 100 academic thesis in the last five years，more than ten textbooks, two national level projects, dozens of provincial level projects, and more than ten other projects of social services.
After years of construction, the laboratory center has formed the following characteristics: Advanced Technology, (satellite remote sensing laboratory information platform is the only one of the similar national colleges and universities); Strong Resource Sharing, (it is oriented to the experimental teaching and the scientific research of four undergraduate specialties of our school and all related specialties of the whole university, and it is oriented to the whole society to conduct the popular science education about 3S technology and joint training of graduate student, and provide production practice services); and Experimental Teaching Mode Innovation(“accommodative” experimental teaching method and “1 + 1 + 1”experimental evaluation model).
General Contact Information
Tel：0086-377-63513727
Address: Wo’long Road No.1638, Nan’yang City, Henan Province
Zip code: 473061
