Art education began in the early years of Tsinghua University, and in the 1930s, the sections of Chinese Music and Western Music were founded, which provided a regular music education for the students at Tsinghua, and the Music Unit was founded in 1946, which used to be the only organization for art education in Chinese universities after 1949. With the development of art education in China, the Music Unit was renamed Center for Art Education in 1993.

　　The Center for Art Education at Tsinghua University is an organization of art education that serves all the students at Tsinghua, whose major mission is: a) to offer courses in art for undergraduate and graduate students at the university; b) to train, direct, and manage the Students’ Art Group; c) to research in the field of art education; d) to guide campus-wide art activities.

　　The Center offers about 40 selective courses in art for students at Tsinghua, covering a wide range of subjects, such as music, dance, drama, the fine arts and photography, and aesthetics. In each of the areas, we offer different courses focusing on different aspects of the subject, such as its appreciation, history, aesthetics, practice and performing, and creation. These courses are offered to satisfy the demand of the students at different levels, with a workload balanced in theory and practice, aiming to cultivate a comprehensive artistic quality and competence in the students. Every year there are more than 7,000 students taking our courses, which has made our program very popular at Tsinghua. In 2000, a master’s program was founded at the Center, whose two tracks, art education and critical study of the arts, enroll 3-4 graduate students every year.

　　The Center’s research is mainly distributed in the following two areas, general art education and aesthetics in the arts. The topics in the first area include “Training and Management of Students’ Art Group,” “A Study of the Ways of Promoting Overall Quality of University Students through a Music Education,” “History of Art Education at Tsinghua University” and “Selection and Training for Talented High School Students for the University,” and the second area has “Some Controversial Issues in 20th-century Aesthetics in the Arts,” “Computer-aided Methods of Analyzing and Processing Musical Information,”  “History of the Exchange in Music between China and the West, and “History of Songs in 20th-century China.” The Center is also engaged in interdisciplinary studies of art education with other departments and universities.

　　It is one of the Center’s main tasks to train and direct the Students’ Art Group at Tsinghua, which has a wind band, an orchestra, a Chinese wind and string band, a chorus, a keyboard team, a dance troupe, a drama troupe, a Beijing Opera troupe, a folk music and dance troupe, an international dance troupe, an artistic photography team, with about 900 students participating from different departments. The practice sessions for the Group are mostly taught by teachers at the Center and specialists from outside university, and all the kinds of group members take practice sessions besides the courses in their own departments, participate in all the performances and have won praises for the university. The Students’ Art Group is a great team in which the students train, study, and work, and from which many have emerged as people of high moral standards and artistic skills, and many of them are now working on different posts and have become the pride of Tsinghua.

　　The faculty and staff include 4 professors, 4 associate professors, 3 instructors, and 2 secretaries. In 2000, the Center was awarded “Excellent-performance Organization in the Art Education for University Students,” and in 2001, it won a first prize for teaching excellence in Beijing, and one professor received an award for excellent teaching in the same year. In 2003, two professors received awards for excellence in teaching and supervising students at Tsinghua’s first teachers’ conference on promoting excellence in teaching and supervising students. A few professors at the Center serve in important positions for a few national academic organizations, such as the Music Education Committee of the Higher Education Association of China, the Committee of Aesthetical Education of the Higher Education Association, the Aesthetics Association of China, the Association of Music Education at Universities in Beijing, Association of Photographers in Beijing, the Research Group for Photography in Beijing, and so on.

　　Currently, Professor Zhu Hancheng is director of the Center and Associate Professor Kou Kexinand Associate Professor Lin Yeqing are associate directors.

　　Address:
　　Center for Art Education
　　Tsinghua University
　　Beijing, P. R. China
　　Postal code: 100084
　　Tel: 86-10-6279 4395，6278 2107
　　Fax:86-10-6279 4395
　　E-mail: wlili@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn