The School of Food and Health (formerly the School of Applied Engineering, founded in 2004) has five higher vocational majors, namely, food inspection and testing technology, agricultural product processing and quality testing, food nutrition and health, food quality and safety, and biopharmaceutical technology. There is an extra pilot program jointly run with Zhejiang A&F University, a four-year higher vocational (bachelor’s degree) program of food quality and safety. There are more than 1200 students currently in the school.
There are 43 faculty members in the school, among whom seven are professors and 15 are associate professors with six of them having a doctorate degree. The faculties have gained many honors: one provincial teaching innovation team, three Zhejiang province professional leaders, one provincial outstanding teacher, one enlisted in the provincial Young Scientists training program, two in the provincial Qianjiang Talents program, and two in the provincial 151 third-tier talents. One is assigned as the deputy secretary general of the National Food Industry Education Advisory Committee, one as a member of the National Biotechnology Advisory Committee, one as the deputy director of the National Petroleum and Chemical Advisory Committee on Medical Intermediate Production Technology, one the deputy director of the Modern Agricultural Circulation Service and Agricultural Product Testing Committee of the National Supply and Marketing Cooperation Education Advisory Committee, and two are entitled experts of the Professional Construction Expert Committee of the National Inspection, Testing and Certification Vocational Education Group.
The school faculty team has directed the construction of two national teaching resource libraries, winning one provincial teaching achievement award. They have participated in the formulation of five industry and professional standards and two international vocational skills standards. The team runs five provincial level and above online open courses and political science courses, and 113 virtual simulation practical training projects. Eight of their published textbooks are enlisted in the 14th National Five Year Plan, eight 1+X vocational skills training textbooks and two provincial 14th Five Year Plan key construction textbooks.
The school has a comprehensive biology and food technology training base with complete functions and first-class equipment. Having a construction area of 5,000 square meters, the base is installed with liquid mass coupling instrument, triple quadrupole gas chromatographic instrument, automatic microbial identification system, real-time fluorescence PCR instrument and other large analytical and testing instruments, with a total value of more than 30 million yuan. The base features outstanding integration of production and education. It has been sponsored by the central government as a provincial higher vocational college construction base, a provincial “13th Five-Year” demonstration training base, one of the provincial first batch of production-education integration demonstration training base. It was also selected as a national collaborative innovation center under the Ministry of Education Innovation Action Plan, a teaching & operation double capable teacher base, and a production training base. It was identified one of the first batch of agricultural products and food inspector vocational skills appraisal workstations, a provincial primary and secondary school internship base and vocational experience base, and a provincial food safety early risk warning exchange base.
We strive to build a high-level technological innovation service platform for the transformation and upgrading of regional enterprises. As a result, a food testing center with CMA qualification was built, as well as a cooperative innovation center for applied technology sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Besides, an open regional practice center for the integration of production and education was approved by the province. The faculty team has been selected as one of the first batch of high-level vocational education science and technology innovation service teams. In the past three years, teachers have been committed to more than 150 research projects of various kinds. Among others, more than 20 projects have been enlisted as the provincial and ministerial level exploration projects sponsored by Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation and the Zhejiang Basic Public Welfare Research Plan. More than 250 papers have been published. The team has won the first prize of the Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Progress award and the third prize of the China Business Federation Science and Technology Award.
The team focuses on the food safety field to build a skills training platform based on the double-capacity teachers training base sponsored by the Ministry of Education, provincial social evaluation organization and provincial skillful talent evaluation expert training base. We also focus on the aged and the small children, building a food safety science popularization platform together with the district to provide customized science popularization services. This program has been selected as the provincial primary and secondary school internship base, Hangzhou consumption education base and Hangzhou Qiantang district science popularization education base for youths. Besides, the team has built a food safety cloud science popularization platform, providing science popularization services both online and offline. Benefiting more than 2,500 people every year, it has become a food safety science popularization brand influential in the area.
Adhering to centralizing moral cultivation and building student-centered education system, the school has trained a large number of outstanding students with high comprehensive quality and strong practice and innovation ability. In the past three years, students have won 20 provincial level or above skills competition awards (including four national ones), and won gold medals in both the Collegiate Rural Revitalization Competition and the Career Planning Competition. The employment rate of graduates has exceeded 99% and the graduates are highly praised by their employers.
Forging ahead in a new era, for a new journey, technological innovation continues to penetrate the food & health industry chain, deeply integrating every link on the chain from production to circulation. It also accelerates the speed of industrial transformation to quality and safety, balanced nutrition, health-orientation, high-tech empowerment and intelligence. The School of Food and Health will focus on the food and drug safety and the nutrition and health development needs of Zhejiang province. Guided by the idea of footing on regional industry, breaking through the integration of production and education, and serving the needs of the industry, the school will be committed to the training of high-quality food health talents so as to contribute to the great strategy of healthy China. (Updated: June 2024)
The school provides seven higher vocational majors, namely, the national supply and marketing system special major (an A-class core major of the provincial high-level professional group), agricultural product processing and quality inspection major (a provincial demonstration and provincial characteristic major), biopharmaceutical technology, food quality and safety, food nutrition and health, automobile technical service and marketing (pilot major of the Sino-German Advanced Vocational Education Project sponsored by the Ministry of Education), and numerical control technology. There is also the food quality and safety four-year higher vocational (bachelor’s degree) pilot program jointly built with Zhejiang A&F University. There are more than 1600 students enrolled.
