National Taipei University Higher Education Sprout Project
The results and highlight strategies of project implementation in 2021
Goal One covers the interdisciplinary plan with the core of the college-oriented base, the plan of streamlined courses and value-added degrees, the plan to increase featured courses, the aim of improving the career placement system and counseling, and the plan of assessment of learning (AoL) as well as the feedback in graduated students’ career development in order to enhance the students’ learning effectiveness. In addition, NTPU continues promoting the use of experts from the industrial, governmental, and academic fields to co-teach courses, launching the interdisciplinary courses with the focus on innovative industries (5+2), implementing the measures of streamlined practicum courses and systems to fortify students’ professional and practical competences. Moreover, with the goal of cultivating students to be equipped with critical capability through the measures of bettering ESP/EAP/A-EGP courses, combining the interdisciplinary courses of programming, introducing the cloud resources provided by Amazon Web Service (AWS) gradually, promoting the innovative startup certificate program, and taking advantage of the innovative startup park. The next goal is to strengthen the support system of teaching by drafting/ratifying new regulations, lowering the application threshold for the related budgets, integrating the inter-college resources, activating the system of teaching innovation, and promoting digital courses like MOOC. Furthermore, NTPU has continued to improve the environment of interdisciplinary learning and set up the pertinent regulations to mandate the university’s day-time bachelor program students admitted in/after the 2021 academic year to take at least one micro credit program (or credit program, minor, or double major), and one programming course for fulfilling the stipulated graduation threshold. In the 2021 academic year, the numbers of students enrolling in second foreign language courses and programming courses increased by 19.0%, and 3% respectively when compared to the figures in the 2020 academic year. Likewise, in 2021, the response rate of a graduate career development survey, the number of the expectant graduates taking a double major, a minor, and a credit program, the increase in those taking credit programs and micro credit programs, and the percentage of courses with innovative teaching increased 7.1%, 12%, 2.8%, and 1% respectively when compared to the figures obtained in 2020. According to data from the Ministry of Education covering the academic year 2020/1, NTPU was ranked third (5.3%), among all public universities in Taiwan, and fifth (5%) nationwide in its number of graduates who successfully completed a double major and a minor.
Goal Two covers elevating professionalism and excellence of enrollment, launching master’s degree programs taught in English, promoting EMI credit programs, implementing talent improvement projects in different colleges, developing deep-sprout sustainable features, promoting the collaboration between the industrial and academic circles, releasing the first-ever highly-credible index of Taiwan’s sustainable values and yearly efficiency reports of public administration education, emphasizing general education of wood-craft, upgrading research momentum of teachers, cultivating excellent talents in political and economic fields, and strengthening featured inter-disciplinary studies and think-tank role. Moreover, NTPU strives to establish itself into the model as a university city through connecting local Sanxia-Yingge resources, offering courses with local features, empowering a mechanism through cultural tours, promoting an environment of low-carbon emission as well as the awareness of food and agricultural safety. With the goal of “aiming at the Asia-Pacific, embracing the world,” NTPU takes pride in expanding and deepening the cooperation with South-bound countries, building working relationships with foreign international cooperation organizations or cultural and educational institutions in Taiwan, building a campus friendly to international students, extending featured alliances/partnerships, enhancing transnational and bilateral theme-based research with practical features, deepening overseas workplace practicum and volunteering service, and increasing students’ international mobility. In the 2021 academic year, the usage rate of freshmen admission via ‘self-selection’ reached 90.67%, ranking 7th among all the public universities nationwide. Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, NTPU sees a significant growth of 16.2% in overseas student enrollment in 2021 compared to the 2020 academic year.
Goal Three places its emphasis on making university operation and financial information public and transparent, implementing IR special case studies, expanding the functions of IR information integrated platform, and implementing myNTPU website (a single access system) with the goal of creating a public, transparent, and available-to-all system. NTPU has set the goals of assisting and perfecting school attendance for economically and culturally disadvantaged students via offering more admission opportunities for students and improving student enrollment/counseling as well as the external funding mechanism. In addition, NTPU spares no effort in upgrading its teaching quality through initiating a reward system of teaching excellence, realizing the system of teacher counseling and evaluation, and hiring more full-time and part-time faculty to lower the teacher-student ratio to 1:20.95. Finally, NTPU has worked hard to increase the flexibility of course-taking for students seeking continuing education, encouraging such students to audit courses for earning credits, and offering new credit programs and in-service programs for the ultimate goal of lifetime learning. From 2020 to 2021, the percentage of economically and culturally disadvantaged freshmen enrolled in the day-time programs receiving subsidies increased by 1.8%, and the total amount of those subsidies from external fundraising has increased by 96.7%.
Goal Four includes integrating the resources, executing pertinent plans, and building a physical base as the USR Hub under the supervision of the university-level USR office. With all these endeavors, NTPU actively encourages teachers to offer USR-featured courses to students by subsidizing the costs as well as rewarding teachers for doing such activities. Via the promotion of USR teacher-student co-learning communities, NTPU extends its footprints into the associated communities for “cross-sectoral” learning and activities with the ultimate goal of fostering a deep connection with the locals population which is an intrinsic part of the social responsibilities of NTPU. In 2021, NTPU sponsored 11 USR teacher communities. Furthermore, thanks to the monetary incentives for teachers, we are seeing a growth in the total number of students taking USR-featured courses, showing a 43.4% increase, and the number of USR-featured courses, which have increased by 15.4%.