Central South University (CSU) is a comprehensive and national key university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education in China. CSU was established in April, 2000 on the basis of the amalgamation of the three former individual universities, namely Central South University of Technology, Hunan Medical University and Changsha Railway University. CSU is situated in Changsha, Hunan. Gao Wenbing is secretary of the Communist Party of China’s CSU Committee, and Prof.Huang Baiyun, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, is president of CSU.
The fields of study at CSU cover 10 branches of learning, namely engineering, science, medicine, management, literature, law, economics, philosophy, education and history. The university now offers 82 undergraduate programs, 282 master’s programs and 142 doctoral programs. It has 22 postdoctoral exchange centers, 6 key national disciplines of first level, 12 key national disciplines of second level, a key national (developing) discipline, 4 national key laboratories and national engineering centers, 5 national training and teaching bases. Among its faculty members, there are 3 academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 12 academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering, 781 doctoral supervisors, 851 full professors and 1639 associate professors. At present, the total number of full-time students at CSU has reached more than 50,000.
CSU is among the 32 universities first acceded to the “211 Project”. CSU covers an area of 3,360,000 square meters and has a total floor space of 1,980,000 square meters.It also uses advanced teaching and research equipment with a total value of 930 million yuan (RMB). The university libraries have a collection of 4,444,900 volumes. Information digitalization and automatic management are applied in these libraries. The university has 3 top affiliated hospitals which enjoy good reputation.
CSU is now struggling for the goal of constructing of a high-level, research oriented comprehensive university well-known both at home and abroad.