A Discussion On Building University Department Culture

Departments are the basic organizing units for teaching, research, and social service, and are the venue for educators' study, work, and life. Through long term study and management, full members of the department bring together both formal organizational structures and informal emotional ties, inevitably forming a relatively tight-nit group, and becoming a major cultural unit within campus culture—a unique part of higher-education department cultureDepartment culture is a sub-culture within university culture. It is a cultural form developed through a long process of educational and managerial innovation, discovery and development within the department. Full teachers and students are the major subjects of the department, with knowledge and professionalism (academics) forming the basis of department culture. The universal acceptance, recognition and respect of basic rules of behavior, ways of thinking, academic ethos, occupational morals and values along with the physical construction and development of the department, the human environment, and the management system all compose the culture of higher-education departmental culture, its institutional culture, physical culture, and behavioral culture. The ethos and mode of behavior is expressed through the spirit of full staff as they carry out theirmanagerial and teaching activities.This thesis takes the concept of departmental culture as its point of departure, the research seeks to explore the features of higher-education department culture: its dependency and penetrability, independence and openness, plurality and structure, academic nature and its features of value education, as well as the various functions of department culture including pedagogical function, social function, encouragement function, creative function, and restrictive function. With a thorough understanding of the content and extent of higher-education department culture, this thesis analyzes the interrelationship of ideological and political education and department culture and the relationship between campus and department culture. The function of department culture and the function of ideological and political education are coincident and the value of department culture and ideological and political education is mutually dependent. However, department culture and campus culture is both unified and varied. Through an analysis of the problems and successes of building departmental culture, this thesis works to summarize the basic experience and inspiration of department culture construction. In the end, the essay provides a rough sketch of four basic principles and five technical essentials for building department culture. I hope that this essay can provide a basis for improving department culture, assisting in the development of the department as a basic unit of ideological education, pedagogy, management and other functions, forming a "name brand department."...