【Innovative teaching and quality】
l The mission of NCTU Innovative Creative Technology Co-working Space (NCTU-ICT) is to integrate university teaching facilities and resources to promote interdisciplinary teaching and practical learning. Ten university-level shared laboratories and three co-working spaces have been established to promote diversity in teaching and learning. In addition to managing facilities, NCTU-ICT also serves as a bridge between faculty members from different disciplinary to form teaching teams for emerging fields. Nine emerging fields/groups and five project-oriented workshop groups have been structured to provide twelve different types of professional practical courses, and two types of practical projects, as well as a great number of mini courses and workshops for building up students’ fundamental knowledge and skills. In total, there have been 268 industrial professionals and faculty members from 18 different departments involving in teaching 302 above-mentioned courses and workshops with a total of 10,692 students.
l First of all, to remove the barrier of learning a single field and help students establish the cross-disciplinary learning, it is NCTU that pioneers to create Cross-Disciplinary Program in Taiwan. Cross-Disciplinary Program has implemented for 4 years and there are 447 students choosing Cross-Disciplinary Program from 2016-2019 which presents students in NCTU gradually place emphasis on cross-disciplinary learning. Secondly, NCTU keeps integrating the teaching resources of departments, institutes or colleges for providing 45 cross-disciplinary module curriculums. Last but not least, NCTU assembles various professional fields’ teachers to work as a mentor team to guide students’ cross-disciplinary learning and eliminate their barriers when they study in Cross-Disciplinary Program.
l We continue to promote Capstone Course in NCTU, and develop indicators of Capstone Course clearly to correspond with each department’s core competencies and indicator. The design of course makes students to solve real problems by using what they have learned. Capstone Course can achieve the purpose that students summarize, deepen and demonstrate professional knowledge. We open 24 courses in year 2019. Course satisfaction is between 3.9-4.3
l NCTU since 2018 has been working with Advance HE, a globally renowned professional membership scheme in a strategic initiative to enhance teaching excellence and offer a route for the NCTU faculty and doctoral students a route to apply for HEA Fellowship. We offer Advance HE certificate programs that align to the Professional Standards Framework and assist our faculty and doctoral students in applying for the internationally recognized HEA Fellowship. The establishment of NCTU Higher Education Accreditation for Teaching (HEAT) is a pioneering initiative of higher education in Taiwan. We aim to promote ourselves as the first Advance HE strategic partner in Taiwan in 2021 to better support our faculty and doctoral students’ continuing development in teaching, acknowledging their quality teaching against international standards, and raise the level of Taiwan higher education to cultivate international talents, thereby enhancing the overall competitiveness of Taiwan. In 2019, 25 faculty and doctoral students completed a 60-hour Certificate Program in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, which was co-delivered by an Advance HE Global Consultancy team from the Academy of Learning and Teaching at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Thirty-five faculty and doctoral students went on to apply for the HEA fellowship and more than 70% have been successfully awarded their Fellowships. NCTU now has a total of 3 HEA Senior Fellows, 30 Fellows, and 2 Associate Fellows.
l NCTU TDIS was selected to attend Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018, and built a “Creative Action Base” in Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in 10 days. NCTU Team TDIS based on developed urban condition, designed an innovative urban renewal solution. By circular building design methodology, design the “Creative Action Base” which was integrating renewable energy, co-working space, and local service infrastructure, reusing urban idle space in the old district of developed cities. NCTU Team was not only design a “Micro-Climate Controlling System” to face the extreme weather, but also design a sustainable urban development model challenging the urban development problem. Finally, NCTU Team had won the Creative Solution Award from the juries from all over the world. The achievements had broken the record of the “Orchid House” in 2014 Solar Decathlon Europe, and continue to be the world’s top in the field of smart green building design.
l DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge is a US $2 million prize competition funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Team NCTU is the only Taiwanese delegation to participate the tunnel event in DARPA SubT Challenge, and were ranked the 7th among the participated teams and 2th among the self-funded teams. DARPA SubT Challenge aims at exploring new approaches of mobility, perception, autonomy, and communication to navigate, map, and search underground environments with hazards, often too high-risk for personnel to enter. The challenge requires deep synergy of diverse expertise of hardware and software including robotics, AI, and communication. Complex subterranean environments, such as tunnel, urban underground, and natural cave, present significant challenges for military and civilian first responders. 11 Teams from around the world competed the first circuit event in tunnel environments. The participated teams include top universities and organization: NASA JPL, MIT, ETH Zurich, CMU, UC Berkeley, Cal Tech, KAIST, NUS etc.
l Endorsed by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in the US, the Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP) has been initiated and launched by the College of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at NCTU. In this program, we encourage our students to cultivate their leadership abilities, such as independent thinking, innovation, globalization, entrepreneurship, especially humanistic solicitude. We promote our students to become Engineering leaders with a global vision by providing pragmatic solutions for basic human needs, bridging technologies to sustainable society, and reinventing human and machine interactions. In 2018, the faculties of ECE College at NCTU joined the Grand Challenges Scholars Program workshop in Hong Kong, which increases the visibility of National Chiao Tung University internationally. In 2019, faculty and students of ECE College at NCTU attended 2019 Grand Challenges Scholars Program Annual Meeting, at Washington, D.C. At the event, we communicate with the faculties and students from different schools, gaining the experience of practitioners, the expertise of academics, and the knowledge of participants from around the world. We expect GCSP at NCTU would prepare students to think in international terms and to develop globally relevant perspectives and skills in engineering field.
【Academic research and industry-academia cooperation】
l The research performance analysis platform was set up to track the dynamics of the dominated research fields developed in NCTU. The platform covers international journal papers and developments from academia and industry cooperation, and the platform will be used to provide statistical information for policy decisions on enhancing advantages of NCTU research fields.
l There were 18 research papers published in the top Science and Nature (series) journals in 2018 and 2019. Moreover, the h-index of NCTU steadily increased year by year and there were 8 among 22 research fields attributed to the globally top 1% according to the Essential Science Indicators (Clarivate Analytics). In the two years of 2018 and 2019, our faculties won 132 times of domestic and international awards.
l In 2018 and 2019, there were 112 students got NCTU scholarships for international cooperation research work in the world’s top universities. By this program, we promoted students’ international mobilities. It also broadened NCTU students’ perspectives and deepens international cooperation.
l There were 19 international conferences and 1 competition held in NCTU and sponsored by NCTU in 2018. More than 4500 attendees from 45 foreign countries joined the conferences. Moreover, 23 international conferences were held in NCTU in 2019 with 8300 attendees from 63 foreign countries.
l In the past two years, NCTU invited 191 international scholarships, including well known researchers in top universities and highly cited researchers, to come to NCTU for cooperation researches through our program of “Enhancing International Academic Influences”. In addition, we recruited 10 highly-impacting scholars via “Yusan (Young) Scholar Program” to strengthen NCTU visibilities.
l The communication between NCTU and the world’s top universities became quite often in 2018 and 2019. There were 877 times of international communications through our program of “Promoting International Research Cooperation”.
l We set up 8 interdisciplinary research groups in NCTU to link semiconductor and information communication technologies. On the other hand, we launched the Smart Health Care Promotion Office to integrate research resources for cooperation projects between NCTU and domestic hospitals. In 2018 and 2019, we also strived and won 5.42 billions of NT dollars from industry-academia collaboration projects. NCTU leads and promotes high-level technological applications in industry so as to train high-tech talents to support Taiwan economics.
【International teaching and research environments】
l International College of Semiconductor Technology (ICST) at NCTU has been conducting the dual degree program with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) since 2017. ICST collaborates with IIT and well-known enterprises in Taiwan to nurture international talents, and that is an innovative talent cultivation model among Taiwanese universities. Under this collaborative program, the partner enterprises provide the IIT students with scholarships, internships, and job opportunities; together they construct a full career path for these talents. Up until 2019, NCTU has signed dual degree program agreements with IIT Madras(IITM), IIT Kanpur (IITK), IIT Bombay (IITB), and IIT Delhi (IITD), and there have been 35 IIT students willing to join this program, including 5 students enrolled. NCTU will continue to promote this program and apply this successful model to other fields.
l NCTU and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have reached an agreement to partner with top enterprises in Taiwan and launched the MIT–NCTU Internship Program, which is the first successful case in Taiwan’s academia. NCTU recruits top students from MIT to conduct researches in laboratories of NCTU and participate in industrial internship programs. This program promotes the exchange between MIT students, NCTU faculties and students, and Taiwan’s industry, creating mutual benefits for the Taiwanese government, enterprises, NCTU, MIT, and students.
l NCTU has been endeavoring to create and promote multicultural diversity and inclusiveness on the campus. We enrich the English-taught courses and provide the students with a thoughtful learning environment, e.g. the prayer room for Muslims and the Indian restaurant. In 2019, there are 1,783 international students in NCTU, which stands for 13.6% of the total students of NCTU.
l NCTU has been encouraging students to study overseas via exchange programs, dual degree programs, internship programs, outbound research programs, and so forth. In 2019, 861 students were studying overseas through these programs, and that represents 25.6% of the yearly graduates with the experiences of study abroad.
【Assistances for disadvantaged students】
l NCTU offers a special program to enroll economically disadvantaged students by lowering the admission criteria. The participating departments come from different colleges, including College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Computer Science, College of Engineering, College of Science, College of Biological Science and Technology, College of Management, and College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The enrollment quota increased from 2.37% (31 students) in 2018 to 5.12% (67 students) in 2019. The number of the registered students was 64 in 2019.
l In 2019, the economically disadvantaged students in NCTU that had been issued incentive subsidy through the guidance mechanism are as follows: 157 students for learning tutoring, 275 students for course learning, 21 students for cross-disciplinary program, 300 students for career exploration, 15 students for career competition, 43 students for off-campus internship, and 180 students for public service-learning activity. There are a total of 991 students, and the externally raised fund has increased year by year.
l To improve the English ability of economically disadvantaged students, the course-learning guidance mechanism in 2019 has encouraged them to take the English courses that are approved by the Life Guidance Division. The students are cultivated to develop good habits of learning English regularly via the Language Teaching and Research Center in NCTU. In 2019, there were 32 students passing the English proficiency test.
【University social responsibility】
l Promotion for AIoT Education：Following the sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations, this university social responsibility (USR) project aims to promote lifelong learning and ensure non-discrimination policy in education everywhere. This aim would like to react the recent trend in artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) which result in decreasing the job opportunities due to the development of robots in industry. This project boosts the impact of USR by fostering the education in junior and senior high schools with new technologies of AI and IoT which are collected from the researches of the professors in Colleges of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. The courses on sensor technology, programming language, algorithm and data structure are provided by different professors in National Chiao Tung University (NCTU). The project carries out a number of courses with 216 hours which can support more than 300-hour classes from level G3 to G12. We also offer the extended education courses with 200 hours for school teachers in primary schools and junior and senior high schools in domestic area. On the other hand, this project further fulfills the company social responsibility (CSR) program and receives donation of 8500 IoT devices which facilitate domestic schools to inspire their AI and IoT educations and to make our young children learned with the capability of AIOT, programming as well as system operation so as to face their brilliant future.
l Sustainable Placemaking in Hsinchu：This was a “university social responsibility” (USR) project which aimed to reactivate the old city district in the Hsinchu City and to promote its regional cultures. A major objective was to achieve “regional innovation” through the means of “social participation” based on the university’s teaching as well as associated courses and actions. Through this project, NCTU has strengthened its relationship and collaboration with the local government, organizations and key people in cultural circles. With creative cultural promotion actions taken based on the collaboration among various disciplines and departments, its team helped to re-energize the Tong Meng Market and promote the whole old city district. The major outcomes lay in four aspects.
In the aspect of “environment”, some public and store spaces were renovated and a station in the market, as a foundation for reactivation actions, has been established. A floor space inside “Ta Tung 108” – the only urban regeneration station (URS) in Hsinchu City – has also been remodeled as a space suitable for indoor exhibitions and parent-child activities. In the aspect of local industries, collaborations with shops in the market have been made to remodel the shop spaces, along with the proposal of new business models. In the aspect of culture, promotions of Hsinchu’s history and culture including the old shops were made via created events, which invited the public to visit and know the old city district and its cultures. In the aspect of education, through courses with deep social participation, the regional cultures were naturally introduced into the teaching and learning which in turn produced energy to activate the local region.