Ruraldevelopment department is originated from regional agriculture department inCollege of Agriculture, which was established in 2013. There are 7 full-timeteachers, including 1 professor, 4 associate professors, and 2 lecturers. Allthese teachers have got the doctoral degree, and 2 people with overseaseducational background.Many people havereceived the awards of teaching, innovation entrepreneurship and socialpractice at all levels, and 1 person was honored as “The school model of teachingquality” and “Excellent teacher”. The teaching and research team has beenformed as the main body of the middle-aged and young people withmultidisciplinary at present.  

In terms of talent cultivation, this departmentmainly cultivates compound talents that have basic theory knowledge ofmanagement science, economics, sociology, ecology and other disciplines relatedwith rural development, master the basic theory, methods and skills of therural regional development, and can engage in planning design, management,promotion consulting, teaching and scientific research and other work in allkinds of related enterprises, government departments at all levels, teachingand scientific research units, etc. It has formed two professional directioncourse group, "rural development planning and design and ecologicalmanagement" and "modern agricultural extension and management ".And more than 10 education teaching practice bases have been established in thegovernment, agricultural parks, family farms, and agricultural enterprises.

In terms of scientific research, two scientificresearch platforms including “regional agriculture research institute",and "rural information engineering center" were established. Inrecently years, focusing on the great demand of agriculture and ruraldevelopment in Yangtze River Delta, over 60 science andtechnology projects were undertook, with an annual research budget of 3 millionRMB. Among them, 3 projects are Key Projects in the National Science &Technology Pillar Program, 1 project is Special Fund for Agro-scientificResearch in the Public Interest, 1 project is Natural Nature Science Fund, 1project is National Social Science Fund, 2 projects are Humanities and socialscience fund of the Ministry of Education, and more than 10 provincialprojects. It published more than 50 core periodical papers on SCI, CSSCI andCSDC and 6 monographs, applied for 6 patents, got 12 software copyrights, andestablished 3 scientific demonstration bases.    

In the aspect of socialservices, depending on Regional Agriculture Research Institute, we haveundertaken more than 40 horizontal cooperation projects on agriculturaldevelopment planning, agriculture park planning and design, etc. in recentlyyears. It has gradually formed the theoretical framework of regionalagriculture planning and design and standard system. We explored theagricultural science and technology service innovation model for Yangtze RiverDelta area through the countryside information engineering center, which wasalso reported more than once by the China Central Television (CCTV), Farmers Daily, etc.