Tourismmanagement department was founded in 1996, consisting of one undergraduatemajor of tourism management. It has twelve full-time teachers including twoprofessors, four associateprofessors and six lecturers. Morethan 80% teachers have doctoral degrees, two teachers have overseas’ experiences,one teacher was selected as a member of the national tourism bureau youthexpert training program, another teacher was selected as a member of “Qinglan Project” in Jiangsu province and threeteachers were elected to “133 key talent project” in NAU, and more than threeteachers worked as tour guide’s qualification examination judges of Jiangsu province’stourism bureau and experts of starred hotel or scenic spots’ assessment andrechecking. In 2007, the major recruited masterdegree candidates of agricultural culture and rural tourism direction underspecial history subject, and in 2010, the major cooperativelyrecruited master degree candidates of tourismmanagement with the college of economics and management.

For a longtime, the major took hold in Jiangsuprovince and oriented to the whole country, always focused on the cultivationof students’ comprehensive qualities and professional abilities. At present,tourism has become one of the largest industries of the world, many newtypes of businesses are emerging rapidly, and the talentdemands are very strong. The major’s educational goal is to cultivate seniorspecialized talents who have solid theoretical foundations, knowledge andskills of tourism management and operation, so as to be well qualified for the works of travel agencies,hotels, scenic spots, other tourism enterprises, and tourism administrativedepartments. Now, the major has one multiple laboratory, seven off-campus teaching practice bases, and one of the modelrural tourism hacker bases of national tourism bureau. Also, the major is amodel base of tourism talents training ofNanjing tourismcommittee. In recent years, the graduates were highly praised by employers and thetalent cultivation quality was recognized by other universities. The students weresuccessively recommended to apply for the masterdegrees at 985 project universities exempt from examinations, such asSun Yat-Sen university, Zhejiang university,Nanjing university, Shanghai Jiao Tong university, East China normal university,Shandong university, Xiamen university and etc. The professional competitions wereorganized by students, including the competition of tourism route planning,hometown style show, simulated tour guide contest, and they have become NAU’s brandactivities and gainedconsiderablereputationsand large influences inside and outside universities.

Through makingfull use of resources and advantages of NAU, our teachers are always researchingon leisure agriculture, rural tourism and heritage tourism, the research achievementsshow a distinctive characteristic. A professionalacademic research institution named the Center of Chinese Rural Tourism Research and Development (CCRTRD) has beenestablished. The leisure agriculture and rural tourism research branch of Jiangsu tourism society is affiliated to our major.

There are more than ten nationalor provincial research projects presided by teachers which come from theNational Natural Science Fund, the National Social Science Fund, the NationalTourism Bureau, China National Ministry ofEducation and the relevant departments ofJiangsu province. Moreover, there are more than twenty research projectswere finished by our teachers, which were commissionedfrom local governments, enterprises andinstitutions. Besides, our teachers have been awarded more than ten scientificresearch prizes from the people's government of Jiangsuprovince, Jiangsu association of socialscience, and Jiangsueducation department, etc.