A Summary and the Highlights of Goal Achievements
Located in the Chiayi-Yunlin-Tainan agricultural region, NCYU faces various challenges, including the aging society, declining birthrate, local brain drain, the long-term insufficient funding, students’ passive learning attitude, and the high number of students quitting school due to incompatible interests with their majors. However, NCYU is still doing its best to tackle the obstacles through conducting institutional research, focusing on the promotion of business-oriented capstone courses and informal courses. It intends to apply the idea of innovative learning to turn the tables, thereby to comprehensively improve the teaching quality and overall teaching effectiveness. In addition, it actively promotes the food-agriculture safety and raises local consensus. Being a local think tank with humanistic concern, it assists in solving regional problems and gradually implements the vision of “Center of the Knowledge and Social Welfare Promotion in Chiayi-Yunlin-Tainan Region.” The university’s annual highlights are summarized as follows:
1.NCYU recruits students based on the institutional research and cultivates students’ multiple talents. An institutional effectiveness promoting group has been organized. School-wide teaching reforms and university features have been developed. All units have been encouraged to apply the institutional research to actively develop relevant reforms and measures. For “Student Recruitment,” the school fundamentally improves the recruitment strategies and the student structure, and then builds the “Recruitment and Student Learning Database” and the “Learning Effectiveness Database of the Disadvantaged Students.” For “Teaching,” in order to react to the post-epidemic era and digital transformation to enrich the digital teaching environment with intelligent technology, it expands diverse learning gateways such as continuous revision on minors, double majors, and flexible credits. Also, university Chinese writing activities and English as a medium of instruction (EMI) are promoted to strengthen the basic Chinese and English skills. For “Learning,” it commits itself to developing a business-oriented capstone plan. Through curriculum innovation, it comprehensively develops autonomous learning innovation and encourages students to demonstrate their learning achievements. Among all of these improvements, interdisciplinary learning has proved the best, based on the questionnaire survey of student learning experiences. Furthermore, students use the Chiayi Children’s Welfare Service Center as their practicum field to create the basis of science museum in Chiayi Region area.
2.Based on teaching and learning innovation and quality, NCYU combines its two primary fields—agriculture and education, and creates its distinguishing feature. The amount of industry-academia-government collaboration projects in 2021 has increased 15.76% than that in 2018, and 157%, 2016. The number of approved Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) college student research projects has increased substantially. Additionally, NCYU has made itself an important base of insect pest biological control by establishing a first-class insect wind tunnel laboratory and creative synthesis of pest pheromones. Outstanding faculty and student research results also has been involved in the project of the international fishery demonstration area in Yunlin County, as well as the research results of drones being applied and collaborated with Hualien Armed Forces General Hospital in distance medical aid and rescue. Last but not least, the passing rates of middle school and elementary teacher certification tests for student teachers were 76.36% and 83.33%, respectively, which were much higher than the nationwide average of 67.37%, and also a new record of NCYU.
3.A professionalized student recruitment center has been established to assist departments to recruit suitable students, as well as providing diverse counseling services to promote socioeconomically disadvantaged students’ enrollment rate. In the upcoming academic year of 2022-2023, 36 departments at NCYU have raised their proportion of application review to at least 30%, which indicates that 92% of NCYU departments which have developed their own features and measurements for application reviews. Also, the enrollment rate of socioeconomically or culturally disadvantaged students has been raised by 14.7%, and the pass rate of alarmed subjects is 80.9%.
4.NCYU faculty and students’ concerns for the local areas meet the Sustainable Development Goals and radiate the fruitful results of fulfilling its social responsibility. Through a series of services for the local elderly, counseling for a sustainable development at the aboriginal tribes in Mount Ali, public environmental education, counseling for youth entrepreneurship, and STEAM team science education for rural areas, we hope to meet the goals of establishing sustainable cities and communities, promoting industrial innovation, and eliminating poverty via quality education, and to elevate the local economic and cultural development.
