Recently, during the 10th Annual Conference of Undergraduate on Innovation and Entrepreneurship & 10th Anniversary Celebration hosted by the China’s Ministry of Education (MoE), an Associate Professor of the College of Management and Economics and Vice Dean of the Xuan Huai School, Tianjin University, Zheng Chundong, won the "Best Supervisor Award". 

In 2007, the Ministry of Education launched the national experimental innovation and entrepreneurship program for university students, and in 2012 launched the innovation and entrepreneurship training program for undergraduates (the "National Innovation Program"). Over the past ten years it has developed into an important platform to improve students' innovative and entrepreneurial ability. In order to acknowledge the managers, experts, teachers and students who have made great contributions to the program, and to promote the sustainable development of the National Innovation Program, an “Honorable Award Scheme for the 10th Anniversary of the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program” was initiated. The nationwide selection process began in May 2017. After applications were received, and network and expert reviews undertaken, 21 candidates were finally selected for Achievement and Contribution Awards, 19 for “Best Supervisor Award”, six for “Innovation Star Award” and five for “Entrepreneurship Star Award”. 

Since 2007, Zheng Chundong has guided more than 70 students toward finishing 14 entrepreneurship projects. Taking the university students' entrepreneurship program as the core link and an important foundation of students’ innovation and entrepreneurship education, he continuously optimized the procedures of project topic selection, guidance and extension of results, and strengthened students' innovation awareness and ability. At the same time, he encouraged students to write academic papers and the students have had many academic papers published. 

Based on the project "The Study of the Online Consumers’ Information Searching Patterns" guided by Zheng Chundong in 2012, the thesis "The Study of Online Consumers’ Information Search Patterns, Based on the Online Public Praise" won the “Best Thesis Award” at the 6th annual university students' innovation and entrepreneurship conference. Its author had the opportunity to give a keynote speech together with the representatives from the Central South University, Tsinghua University, East China Normal University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. At the same time, the academic paper, "How Does the Online Water Army Influence Your Purchase Intention" was published in the "Nankai Management Review”, a domestic high-level academic journal in the field of management. It has been downloaded 2,940 times, quoted 13 times, and was fully reprinted by a domestic authority in the field of social science abstract as a “periodical literature reprinted by Renmin University of China”. 

Apart from expertly guiding the students’ work, Zheng Chundong worked a lot on the organization management and experience sharing of the project. He has promoted innovation and entrepreneurship education at Tianjin University by taking the Xuan Huai School, Tianjin University as a pilot project for the optimization and argumentation of topic selection, project guiding experience exchange seminars among other initiatives.　 

Since 2007, Tianjin University, as the first batch of pilot universities selected into the program of "National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program", has established the implementation system of the "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Plan for University Students" at national, city and school-level. So far, there have been 2,746 innovation and entrepreneurship training program projects with more than 11,000 student participants. 

Editors: Sun Xiaofang and Ross Colquhoun