Conference on building key tasks for the 2023-2024 academic year of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Overview of the Conference in Thanh Hoa in June 2023
 

The conference was attended by the entire Board of Directors, Science and Training Council, secretaries, heads of affiliated units, and leaders of mass organizations.
The conference was honored to welcome Prof. Dr. Phung Huu Phu - the first former Principal of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Chairman of the Science and Training Council, Chairman of the School's Policy Advisory Council. Speaking at the Conference, Prof. Dr. Phung Huu Phu expressed his joy and highly appreciated the results achieved by the School in the past school year. The School works more and more systematically, actively innovates, bringing direct benefits to students and teachers; focusing all resources to invest in human resources. Prof. Dr. Phung Huu Phu emphasized: In the coming time, there are still many challenges that require the efforts, solidarity, unanimity, and high determination of the Board of Directors, all lecturers, students, and trainees in the School. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Prof. Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan (Principal of the School) summarized a number of outstanding results in implementing the conclusions of the 2022-2023 Conference, emphasizing that after a year with outstanding efforts of the entire leadership, staff and lecturers of the School, the set goals have been basically achieved.
Undergraduate and postgraduate training activities are increasingly standardized and improved in quality. Admissions are done well, enrollment is correct, sufficient, exceeding targets, quality is improved. Teaching and learning plans are designed flexibly and reasonably, creating convenience for lecturers and students in the teaching and learning process, improving the efficiency of using facilities and lecture halls.
In the field of scientific research, in addition to the policy of rewarding international publications, the School has promptly revised, adjusted and supplemented the documents regulating the School's scientific research to link training and scientific research; build policies to create conditions for staff and students to conduct scientific research and publish internationally...
In the past year, the School has completed the 2nd cycle of Self-Assessment Report of Educational Institutions, completed the quality assessment of 11 training programs according to the standards of the Ministry of Education and Training (with Certificate), 01 training program according to AUN-QA standards; Completed the adjustment of training programs according to the new Training Regulations of VNU.
Student management, care and support work is being promoted in a more practical direction.
The work of organizing cadres has achieved many successes: perfecting the Party Committee, perfecting the leadership team of units, stabilizing the organization to enter a period of strong development.
Financial work is carried out in accordance with regulations, flexibly, creatively, and innovatively in the way financial resources are managed and operated.
Regarding administrative work and facilities, the University has developed a plan and completed the upgrading, repairing and supplementing of equipment in lecture halls and units to promptly serve training, scientific research and management work. The self-study space for students has been expanded 5 times, the working space for staff is more spacious and convenient. University administration is increasingly modernized on the basis of increasing the application of science and technology. VNU-USSH is one of the pioneering units in VNU to deploy many software: one-stop administrative management software, student support, E-office software to all training units, job information portal and App to support student management, ... which are highly appreciated by VNU. In his speech, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Thanh Nam emphasized some shortcomings in the enrollment work, training organization, the content of the postgraduate training program has not been renewed, the modules are still divided, the reference learning materials of some training programs have not been updated, and the application-oriented majors are still limited. In the coming period, the key task in training work is to continue to strengthen communication for enrollment work, especially organizing preparatory university conversion classes; optimizing student training schedules; increasing the integration of postgraduate training programs; enhancing solutions to maximally support students to meet foreign language output standards. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dao Duc Thuan (Head of Personnel Organization Department) presented a report on the current situation of human resources, staff and lecturers of the School, emphasizing that: young staff (under 40) with PhD degrees, Associate Professor titles and above are decreasing sharply. In the past school year, the School has implemented many policies to support lecturers, especially young lecturers to standardize their titles and recruitment policies. In the coming year and the following years, the core task of the School is still to invest in human resource development, so it is recommended that leaders of units create preferential conditions for guiding students and PhD students for "near-standard" staff. The School needs to have flexible solutions to mobilize collective intelligence, promote the role of each individual to contribute to the overall development of the School. According to MSc. Kim Thi Diep Ha (Head of Planning and Finance Department), autonomy in higher education is an inevitable trend today. And according to the roadmap towards autonomy, educational institutions are entitled to determine tuition fees based on the development of technical and economic standards for training programs that have been accredited. The school currently has 18 training programs that have developed tuition fees according to technical and economic standards. Thus, the school has the basis to increase financial resources to better invest in human resources and improve training quality. However, in the current situation, the school also faces challenges, which means that increasing tuition fees according to the roadmap requires innovation in training programs, improving training quality, and commensurate facilities. According to Dr. Trinh Van Dinh (Head of the Department of Scientific Research Management), although the number of international publications by lecturers has not increased much, there has been a breakthrough in quality. Student scientific research has also had fundamental innovations in regulations, many topics have high quality and are published internationally. However, the skills to publish an international article as well as the foreign language ability of graduate students are still limited, so in the coming time, we hope that training units will share and accompany more closely. In the coming school year, the Department of Scientific Research Management will focus on completing and promulgating regulations and documents on scientific research, enhancing research activities to serve the community and policy consulting.
Based on reports from functional departments, conference delegates discussed and proposed a number of recommendations and solutions to successfully implement key tasks in all areas of activity.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, Principal Hoang Anh Tuan respectfully thanks and accepts the guidance of Prof. Dr. Phung Huu Phu and demonstrates the determination of all staff of the University in developing and enhancing the position of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities so as not to let down the efforts of previous generations of teachers and scientists.
Concluding the conference, Principal Hoang Anh Tuan emphasized 5 key tasks:
1- The strength as well as the core element that makes success is Humanity, which is the consensus between the top and bottom, democracy but must be united, unified, thinking must go hand in hand with doing and when doing, must be resolute, do it to the end.
2- Focus all resources to improve the quality of human resources: Increase the number of human resources with doctoral degrees or higher, improve academic titles, "study up" and "study out" to ensure interdisciplinary training of training programs. Have a policy to recruit and attract high-quality human resources to work at the school. In the coming time, training programs that do not meet the requirements for the number of staff with standard academic titles and degrees may stop training.
3- Diversify revenue sources, wisely manage expenditures, and have solutions to increase income and living standards for staff and lecturers.
4- Resolutely focus on completing a number of new training programs, not only to serve the core of the school's training work but also to fulfill the national mission; standardize and improve the quality of training from bachelor's, master's to doctoral levels.
5- Innovate training, university management, administration, cooperation and development in a modern, practical and effective direction. The conference ended in an exciting atmosphere and high consensus of the delegates with the key contents that Principal Hoang Tuan concluded.