Founded in 1951, Shenyang Normal University is a key comprehensive university directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. It is one of the oldest renowned universities throughout the country and one of the high-ranking universities whose development is given priority by the state. The College of International Education of Shenyang Normal University was established in 1994. It is a comprehensive educational institution mainly responsible for the admission, teaching, management of and service for the international students. The admission and cultivation of international students in Shenyang Normal University can be traced back to the 1950s. Shenyang Normal University was one of the first Chinese universities accepting international students and offering Chinese courses to them. It has been one of the major universities in China engaging in international students’ education since the 1980s. It was designated by China’s Ministry of Education as "a key university supporting the Chinese language teaching in neighboring countries", and was among the first universities in China to have established overseas Confucius Institute (s). In order to enhance Chinese teaching and future development of research work, in the year of 2005, Shenyang Normal University established "Research Center for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language". The center consists of such research institutes as Chinese Teaching Research Institute, Linguistics Economics Research Institute, Modern Language Education Technology Research Institute and Chinese Culture Research Institute. The College of International Education, with many talented and experienced teachers and fine teaching facilities, now admits students for studies in linguistics and applied linguistics for master’s degree, and students for studies in pedagogy (second language teaching) for double bachelor’s degree. It also undertakes such programs as training Chinese teachers for overseas schools and institutions. In addition, Shenyang Normal University is designated by the state to be a center for HSK (Chinese proficiency test) and a center for appraising the competence of teaching Chinese as a second language. In September 2008, an agreement was signed between Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization and SYNU to establish TAG-Confucius. Shenyang Normal University website: http://www.synu.edu.cn/