Outstanding highlights of 2019 National Chiayi University(NCYU) Higher Education Sprout Project (HESP).
National Chiayi University prides itself in its strengths in teaching, research and service in the field of agriculture and education. The school actively addresses the problems arising from changes in the social and economic structure of agriculture, as well as education inequality between urban and rural communities of the Chiayi, Yunlin, and Tainan Region. The establishment of a working group on the “3 + 2 Smart Platform” will ensure the efficiency of communication between the university administration and the communities we aim to better serve. Together this platform will lend additional resources and manpower to advance a nonpartisan group to jointly cooperate, and to undertake relevant university-community projects. Accordingly, various improvements and renovations in existing infrastructure, as well the establishment of talent development programs for gifted students has been appropriately evaluated. To build the University as “The Center of Knowledge and Social Welfare Promotion in Chiayi-Yunlin-Tainan Region.”
In order to achieve these goals, Chiayi University, through in-depth administrative study and analysis, has carried out various creativity of teaching with efforts to increase students’ self-confidence and learning-achievement. To enhance problem-solving skills, and to provide practical-hands-on experience, And the University aims to promote positive learning attitudes, to endow students with a lifelong capacity for independent learning. By the continuous development of agriculture and education, establishing the ”The Training and Research Institute of Food and Agriculture” and “Food and Agriculture Industry Services and Value-Added Platform.” It has strengthened the regional chain of production and has assisted the development and upgrade of the local industry. To promote science literacy and to increase science engagement and enthusiasm for primary and secondary school students, teaching and research classrooms for popular science have been established, as well as the regional school resources have been integrated.
The efforts the University has put in Higher Education Sprout Project have been successfully achieved with reaching all aspects of university social responsibility as the primary goal. The relevant annual highlights are listed below:
First, ongoing revision of rules and updates of existing education infrastructure and resources: To ensure academic excellence, the University aims to continually revise and improve regulations, policies, methodologies and strategies related to education, research and public engagement. In particular, it aims to provide cutting edge teaching facilities, equipment, and resources in order to ensure high quality of student learning.
Second, comprehensive innovation of the general education curriculum: the original mixed general curriculum, “basic programming” is revised so that freshmen by different levels will receive comprehensive graded training in the systematic logical thinking with relevant skills for the digital age.
Third, reorganisation of the overall curriculum to incorporate academic and operational training to achieve university social responsibility: To provide students with both theoretical training and practical hands-on training, the College of Art and Humanities offers a new cooperative course of performing arts and marketing industry where students have opportunities not only to train in the arts, but to also be involved in planning and promoting various art exhibitions and performances. Later musical theater based on this course in the National Opera made the first case of successfully selling 100% of all tickets. The overall performance and service from Chiayi University won the 6th Ministry of Education in Taiwan “Art Education Achievement Award - Excellence School Award" in 2019.
Fourth, opening the campus and sharing social resource: Chiayi University cooperated with the Chiayi local hospital to set up a long-term care station (Chia-Yuan) within the campus. In order to maintain and improve physical and mental health of the elderly, this facility provides activities to local elderly with a series of physical and art courses specifically designed by students and professors.
Fifth, major achievements in agriculture and education
(1) To promote eco-friendly and sustainable modern agriculture, both inside and outside the classroom, we have collaborated with students to synthesize sweet potato weevil (Cylas formicarius) pheromones as an alternative to harmful, chemical pesticides. This synthetic pheromone is now a recognized pesticide alternative that is endorsed and provided by the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan to local farmers.
(2) To provide food safety for all by guiding students to develop methods for the rapid detection of pesticide residues. Additionally, we aim to establish a standard criteria using synthetic pesticide products for Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to verify counterfeit, unsafe products.
(3) To promote public engagement, we established the first classroom of popular science and research for all levels of schools in Chiayi City. Professors and students set up a popular science team to support the promotion of science at all levels of primary and secondary schools in both local and rural areas. In 2019 it has cooperated with the Chiayi Children’s Welfare Center, Expanding the service area to the Chiayi Children's Welfare Center and continuously participating in the promotion of the popular science train activities with the help of Ministry of Education. In total, the activities and services has culminated to over 8,000 people in one year.
(4) One of the consequences of an aging population, is the gradual loss of manpower in rural farmlands. Thus one of the core aims is to develop agricultural robots to revolutionize modern agriculture. Thanks to the AI technology, it combined with agricultural experts’ knowledge and the IoT control, we have applied this technology to successfully plant and harvest bell peppers and pineapples.
(5) The University promises to adhere to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by developing agriculture and education while taking into account the three major aspects of economic growth, social progress and environmental conservation.
Sixth, to safeguard the fairness of education opportunities for disadvantaged students: To achieve this goal, in addition to the main University funding, the University has established an independent bursary to actively fund and recruit disadvantaged students. With these efforts, the number of economic and cultural disadvantaged students has grown to 13.8% in 2019. To establish the Aboriginal Students Resource Center, with the help of multi-tutoring and counselling, the drop-off rate among the aboriginal students has reduced effectively year by year.
Seventh, to support students to participate in entrepreneurial competition, with goals to encourage young adult to start a business and to assist local economic development: Our students participated in the 14th national largest entrepreneurial competition and won the Silver Award. The teachers and students together have assisted small and medium-sized business partners to improve successful 20 cases of product upgrades and product branding for nearly two years. These endeavors have activated local economic development and have encouraged the formalization and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Picture 1: Image of students in the Food and Agriculture Industry Management Cross-Domain Learning Program - experience in the greenhouse.
Picture 2: Gifted students development program in food-agriculture industry – Observation on sweet potato weevil (Cylas formicarius).
Picture 3: Receiving the “Art Education Achievement Award” from the Ministry of Education.
Picture 4: Compilation of popular science materials for primary and secondary school education.
Picture 5: Image of robot-spraying equipment for bell peppers.
Picture 6: Presentation of project results.
Plentiful results of 2019 National Chiayi University Higher Education Sprout Project.
National Chiayi University regards itself as a “comprehensive university with excellent teaching which integrates featuring research and industrial practice”. In doing so, students benefit not only from innovative, high quality teaching but also from practical research opportunities. The University is devoted to developing featured researches and innovated research in the Chiayi, Yunlin and Tainan region, with the goal of improving social and economic welfare in the regional community. It was planned to put into practice in the fields of “Education” and “Agriculture”, which are highly compatible with Higher Education Sprout Project. Accordingly, 2019 Highlights of implementation could be presented from those two fields of “Education” and “Agriculture”.
Education field: In order to provide the most relevant and current content, the University continually renew the teaching material. For this purpose, to promote the general education and experienced curriculum, micro-credit courses, college-featured cross-disciplinary courses, overall courses, and basic programming courses of freshmen. Through the overall courses of each department, students integrate the knowledge they have learned in the form of performances, presentations or competitions to present learning results, and integrate the department’s characteristic weekly activities and innovative courses into operation and overall concepts to incubate operational masters. Throughout the courses, students can find resources to solve problems practically from the implementation side. In 2019, total 31 overall courses were offered (including operational overall courses, cross-field overall courses, overall courses of various departments, etc.). Through long-term care station "Chia-Yuan", NPO-friendly product marketing and other practical field practices, the operational overall courses integrated and demonstrated the knowledge learned by students, making the courses truly in line with reality and shortening the gap between learning and use. And through cross-domain courses to cultivate π-typed talents that meet the needs of the times.
In response to the changes in the teacher training policies of the new syllabus, the Teacher Education Center of Chiayi University organized workshops to enhance teachers and students' understanding of the connotation of the new syllabus, at the same time integrated the new syllabus literacy-oriented teaching resources and the Chiayi area primary and secondary schools to form a “Teacher Training Partner School Strategic Alliance" to establish a teacher community alliance to jointly strengthen the cultivation of excellent and high-qualified young talents in the Chiayi area in the future.
To promote popular science education, this year the University not only cooperated with Chiayi Children’s Welfare Service Center, organizing “Holiday Hands-on Science” activities, but also signed an agreement with Chiayi city government, enhancing teachers training, improving the popular science to locally spread. In 2019 for students’ guidance work, the University have increased accessibility of counselling services for disadvantaged students. In addition, Through the Indigenous Students Resource Center to strengthen the guidance mechanism of aboriginal students. It has provided the aboriginal students assist with their courses, life, activities and career. And it also has helped students to form a study circle and to establish a life-mentor system, therefore, the center has given students immediate assistance and referral resources from both academic and daily life.
Agricultural field: To promote food safety services and agricultural technologies, the University has established two centers: the “The training and research institute of food and agriculture” and the “Intelligent Agriculture Research Center ”. Through the Food and Agriculture Industry Service Value-added Platform to integrate the internal services and external services technologies, besides, continuously to cultivate future industry elites with three cross-domain programs.
Agricultural and Food Safety Cross-Domain Learning Program: Completing Sweet Potato Weevil (Cylas formicarius) pheromones based on academic theory. Publishing a picture book with the theme of sesame to introduce agricultural expertise to general public in the cooperation with Department of Agronomy, Department of Chinese Literature, Department of Plant Medicine, and Department of Applied Chemistry.
Food and Agriculture Industry Management Cross-Domain Learning Program: Combining product packaging design industry, food industry, etc. to conduct industry-academic cooperation projects for high-quality Taiwanese agricultural processed products, and to provide practical opportunities to participate in product packaging design, product naming and promotion, and online community management. So that students can conduct practical training, accelerate industry-university linkages, and can promote food and agricultural education inside and outside the campus. In total, 55 food and agricultural education promotion activities were conducted in two years.
Intelligent Agriculture Cross-Domain Learning Program: Developing new food and agriculture service technologies such as agricultural robots, smart chicken coops, pheromone control, rapid pesticide residue examine, and agricultural drones. And coaching students to participate in the 2019 Taoyuan Agricultural Expo-National Farm Robots Competition with excellent results.
The agricultural program also supports local young entrepreneurs and the development of local features. This year Chiayi University cooperated with the “Chiayi G9 Creative Park” to offer lectures and activities to upgrade local agricultural products, such as water chestnut processing, okra drinking product development, etc., in the combination of the energy of the College of Agriculture, College of Science and Engineering and College of Life Science. In coordination with government policies to promote the tribal vitality plan in economic and cultural development, the University provided three tribes Shinmei, Daban and Chiali in Ali County counseling and relevant materials, assisting to develop more efficient methods to produce bean pastries, herbal jellies and biscuits from red bean and arrow root. Once produced, assisting with the packaging design and retail in marketing. To encourage the interaction and local learning between the University and tribes, “Traditional plants camp of Cou” was established as well with the Shinmei tribe. For an aging population, in collaboration with the Chiayi local hospital, a long-term care station “Chia-Yuan” was set up, which provides activities and exercises for elderly. Due to successfully encouraging high attendance to the “Long-term care 2.0 project,” a good atmosphere of coexistence and mutual learning was formed between students, hospital staff, and elderly.
The University strives to enhance the knowledge and social welfare promotion of the Chiayi, Yunlin and Tainan region as a goal, to develop unity and common prosperity among the colleges of Teachers, Humanities and Arts, Management, Agriculture, Science andEngineering, Life Science, Veterinary Medicine. To bolster these efforts, on 31 October 2019, Chiayi University officially signed a cooperation agreement with the Chiayi City government to strengthen teachers’ training, popular science education, sports economy, resource integration, animal protection and health care, food safety,tourism with foreign languages, plant care, environment beautification, and technology development and local Revitalization. Looking forward to enhancing the local industry, economy and welfare with professional knowledge and skill of faculty in the university.