On January 15, 2018, the first day of the second semester of the 2017/2018 academic year, FED held an orientation session for thesis preparation for the 2017 postgraduates, particularly to assist them to prepare their research and thesis writing as soon as possible.

The Dean of FED as well as the Academic Registrar of the University, Dr. Sean Li, and the full-time faculty team, the visiting scholar, the administration staffs from FED attended this meeting. Firstly, the Programme Coordinator, Dr. Shao Yanju introduced one by one about the basic issues related to essay specification, submission process, student status management, supervisor selection and so on. After that, the dean invited teachers to introduce their own academic background and research fields. In the meantime, the dean also gave a detailed introduction about each of the distinguished professors and part-time doctoral supervisors. Finally, the dean encouraged all the graduate students to work hard, select topics carefully, communicate with the supervisor enthusiastically to build an academic community with the supervisors and deepen and refine the research on the basis of two-way choice.

After the meeting, all the students and teachers conducted a profound discussion and exchange on how to choose supervisors and how to determine research propositions. The students all believed that this was a new semester gift from FED to all the 2017 graduate students, and they would be full of confidence in the following thesis research and writing!