Be established on 31st March 1966, Faculty of Science was one of four faculties of Can Tho Institute which were Law and Social Sciences, Letters, and Education. Previously, the Faculty of Education was training undergraduate (bachelor degree) students, the College of Agriculture was training engineers, and the Center of Foreign Languages was offering foreign language courses.
Faculties of Science offered two undergraduate programs which were precision science and life science. After 1975, the Faculty of Education was separated into the Faculties of Science Education and Social Science-Humanities Education, training upper secondary teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, history, geography, and foreign languages. After that, they were expanded to 5 separated faculties: mathematics - physics (1980), chemistry - biology (1980), history - geography (1982), letters (1983) and foreign languages (1983).
In 1995, there was a big cooperation project called MHO between Can Tho University (CTU) and the Netherlands Government. MHO-3 (Basic science program) was one of the 9 projects from MHO in CTU, Viet Nam.
On 1st April 1995, the MHO-3 started with the purpose of helping CTU build up basic science training programs and supported upgrading the quality of teaching based on experiments combined with theory. In the framework of the MHO-3 program, the College of Sciences was re-established under Decision 147/ĐHCT.TCCB.95 dated 06 October 1995 with the primary mission of teaching basic science subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and informatics.
On 14th January 1998, CTU celebrated the opening ceremony of College of Sciences. The first Board of Deans (1995-1997) included Professor Tran Phuoc Duong (Dean), Doctor Huynh Thu Hoa (Vice Dean), Master Nguyen Xuan Tranh (Vice Dean) and Master Le Anh Tuan (Vice Dean). The total number of teaching staffs was 60.
Based upon the Decision 1242/QĐ-ĐHCT dated 14 August 2009, College of Sciences was renamed as College of Natural Science (CNS). Currently, CNS hosts 6 graduate programs and 4 undergraduate programs covering the fields of natural sciences such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology which contribute greatly to the training of scientific human resources for the development of the Mekong Delta as well as the whole country.
Facilities:
At the beginning, the College had a two-floor building consisting 12 laboratories for biology, chemistry, physics; 6 computer rooms; an administrative office. Most lab equipment was from Netherlands. Now, CNS has 19 laboratories with modern machines and equipment, 1 computer room and 15 classrooms. Thanks to the capital of CTU as well as other projects, old facilities have been replaced year after year. In 2010, CTU invested to enlarge lab areas of the College by making a three-floor building with 22 rooms strongly supporting for research and educational activities of the College.
At the recent, CNS has 4 Departments which are Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and 1 Administrative office-Library.
Undergraduate Education
CNS started educating Biotechnology major course 27 from 2001 to 2006. Since the following years 2002, 2006, 2007, other bachelor majors of Chemistry, Applied Mathematics, and Biology have been opened. Since 2010 and 2014, two following bachelor programs including Medicinal Chemistry and Applied Physics have also been opened.
Beside the mission of teaching these majors, CNS is also responsible for teaching basic science subjects for students from various training programs of CTU such as Engineering, Information Technology and Agriculture.
At the College, students can practice in the labs or computer rooms after studying theory. At the third year of every program, the College organizes field trips for students to visit and study in companies, factories, research institutes, and other places related to their major. After the field trip, students will make reports and display specimens that were collected. These activities offer students useful knowledge and make lessons more realistic.
There are more than 100 students who get enough qualification and graduate from CNS each year. It supplies a large number of human recourses for the Mekong delta.
In the recent year, together with the development of lecturer's researches, many students have registered to conduct researches under lecturer's guidance. Typical research results include: The Golden Prize of Holcim Prize with the research topic: Building model to handle packaging, waste, pesticide after using in An Lac Ward, O Mon District, Can Tho City; the First Prize of National Scientific Research for Students 2010 with the research topic: Synthesis of bio-lubricants from lard and tallow.
In addition, The College usually organizes extracurricular academic activities for students. Natural Science Club is carried out from two to three times each year. This is one of the extracurricular activities with useful knowledge about current issues, serious diseases, environmental problems, climate change that attracts many students from CTU. It helps them increase positive awareness of protecting their health as well as the environment. Youth Union also organizes experience sharing workshops to help freshmen get along with learning at CTU.
Graduate Education
Since 2004, in the supporting from Professor Nguyen Van Hieu, CNS has started to offer graduate programs in Mathematics (Algebra and Number Theory; Analytic and Probability and Statistics), Chemistry (Theoretical and Physical Chemistry, Organic Chemistry), Physics (Applied Physics and Theoretical Physics) and Ecology. In collaboration with Universities and Institutes from HCM City, CNS is not only responsible for managing issues but also for teaching 70% of the programs and instructing graduate students doing theses.
CNS now hosts more than 874 graduate students of all majors with the number of graduate students reaching almost 90% each course. These highly qualified human resources effectively support in socio-economic development of the Mekong Delta.
Scientific Researches and Seminars
Since the establishment till 2003, due to lack of highly qualified lecturers, scientific researches were rather limited in the College. It changes rapidly as more and more lecturers being involved in scientific researches. They eagerly register many research topics, which are under managed by CTU, Ministry of Education and Training and others. They have also been actively searching for opportunities to cooperate with domestic and international partners in conducting researches.
In November 2010, in order to review five-year term of educational and scientific research activities (2005-2009), CNS organized the Conference of Education and Scientific Researches. That event marked a remarkable period of development of CNS in education and scientific research and technology transfer activities. 17 Ministry level and 31 University level researches had been successfully carried out and 40 international, 50 national published papers had been reported.
Personnel Development
Since establishment, CNS did pay attention to personnel development. After the first stage of the project (1997-2000), 7 masters graduated from the Netherlands Universities and 10 from domestic Universities. In the second stage (2001-2005), there were 4 Doctors who were trained in the Netherlands and many other lecturers were supported to study master degree in Viet Nam. After finishing MHO-3 program, CNS has continued to participate in the TRIG project, which supports for lecturers to study oversea. In addition, CNS’s staffs have been actively searching for scholarships to study abroad. As a result, many lecturers are now following Master and PhD programs in Australia, America, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and also in domestic Universities. There were only 60 staffs (02 Doctors, 04 Masters and others) in the established time. Now, the College has 93 staffs with 12 Associate Professor, 19 Doctors as well as 38 Masters, 24 teaching assistants and office staffs.