The predecessor of National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Environmental Science and Technology is Water Supply and Drainage Experimental Station of Health Engineering Department founded in 1956. After the 1980s, it has been gradually become an independent experimental teaching department of environmental subjects. For a long time, the leaders of the university and department pay great attention to experimental teaching as an important aspect to ensure and improve the quality of undergraduate teaching. Through the unremitting efforts and long-term development of several generations, a relatively complete experimental teaching system, teaching methods and management model have been formed. In the meantime, a dedicated high-level team of experimental teaching staff has been built, editing many widely-used textbooks which integrate educational experiments and theoretical experiments together, such as four National Planning Textbooks in the 11th Five-Year Plan of General Higher Education including Experiments of Water Pollution Control Engineering, Experiments of Environmental Engineering, Environmental Microbiology and Treatment and Resource Utilization of Solid Waste, a National Excellent Textbook titled Environmental Monitoring and so on. The laboratory has been rated as the Advanced Laboratory of Tongji University for many times, has been commended by Shanghai Advanced Laboratory for three times, and has been awarded the National Advanced Laboratory Group of Universities once.

After obtaining the title of National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center, the university and department have paid more attention to the further construction and development of the it. We have established a guarantee system and operating mechanism in terms of policies, continued to increase investment in resources, and fully rely on national-level research institutions such as the State Key Laboratory and the National Engineering Research Center in disciplines to encourage key teachers in the frontline of teaching and research to actively participate in experimental teaching.  The sharing of equipment and conditions has formed a guarantee system for the construction of high-level demonstration centers, realizing orderly and efficient construction work. Over the past three years, the university and department have invested 10.65 million Yuan in the construction of the center through the “211”, “985” and other discipline construction projects as well as the laboratory repair and purchase program of the Ministry of Education. As a result, the infrastructures have been improving continuously and the center is still striving to reach the goal of international advanced level.

According to the environmental disciplines, the center requires students to have a solid theoretical foundation, strong practical ability to solve environmental problems, and combines advantages and innovations to improve the three-level experimental teaching system of "consolidating the foundation, strengthening practice, and developing innovation", promoting the modernization of experimental teaching of environmental subjects. With the close cooperation between the full-time teachers of experimental teaching and the core teachers working at the frontline of teaching and scientific research, we combine our work with the development of the discipline and continue to develop a number of experimental teaching projects and equipment that are closely integrated with scientific research achievements and engineering practice. Along with resource integration and centralized investment, we have further improved the operation quality and level and achieved the organic combination of digital technology and experimental teaching, improving operation efficiency and demonstration function of experimental teaching. In particular, the "Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Purification and Resource Recovery Process Virtual Simulation Comprehensive Experiment" and the "Farmland Soil Heavy Metal Pollution Ecological Rehabilitation Virtual Simulation Comprehensive Experiment" constructed by the center won the national first-class virtual simulation experiment teaching courses.

The center has set up large scale environmental science and technology innovation experiments to build a platform on which the scientific research and teaching are closely integrated together, benefiting more than 90% of the students. We let first-class teachers, first-class equipment and major scientific research projects serve for the cultivation and improvement of college students' innovation ability. During the process, we have discovered a group of top-notch undergraduates represented by the winners of the special prize in National Challenge Cup and the first author of EST papers in top journals of environmental science.

Relying on the discipline advantages, a progressive experimental teaching team and experimental teaching culture, the center published a number of teaching reform articles, applied for a batch of experimental teaching patents and undertook the plenary meeting of the discipline group of the demonstration center in 2012 to discuss and communicate about the construction and development of the demonstration center. Through the construction process, the National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center has gradually become one of the important bases for research, development and communication of experimental teaching of environmental discipline in China. Together with other universities, it will keep on promoting the modernization and internationalization of environmental experimental teaching in the future.