The current challenges of Taiwan higher education have serval aspects, globalization in higher education, colleges’ lack of uniqueness, expected connection with the local community, need for innovations in industries, outside-the-box practice in classroom, and higher education for the public good. National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) bases on its mid-and long-term goal, means to create an arena where students and faculty may indulge in trans-disciplinary projects, and may work hand-in-hand with the local communities.
The first objective is putting innovative teaching into practice. In order to enhance instructors’ skills in teaching and curriculum design, university promote serval projects to encourage professors to put the creativity, innovation and entrepreneur factors into their classes. For training students to develop abilities expected of them by the contemporary society, self-motivated learning project assists self-designed independent students to build teams to pursue their own ideas into reality.
Figure: Edward Coyle (VIP Consortium Chef.) awarded ABET 2019 Innovation Award. NDHU promotes cross-domain πVIP innovative courses and the international team of the "Vertical Integration Special Course Program (VIP)" won the " ABET 2019 Innovation Award".
Link: https://epage.ndhu.edu.tw/files/13-1000-146199-1.php?Lang=zh-tw
Figure: Freshman took NDHU featured courses amazed by the beauty of Hualien.
NDHU Pre-major Program began to implement special talent selection channels in 2019. NDHU provide freshman summer camp and plans featured and local courses, including "Introduction of Hualien's Culture and Environment", "Creative Thinking", and "Oral Expression and Etiquette Practice", in order to discover themselves for the learning plans.
Link: https://epage.ndhu.edu.tw/files/13-1000-143270-1.php?Lang=zh-tw
The second thing is to place more stress on the public-good nature of higher education. Percentage of low socioeconomic status (SES) student in NDHU is about 14% in 2019. We have the responsibility to offer adequate resources for better learning experience to these students. I can fly supporting group (ICF) provide mentors’ assistance and counseling for students to have better adjustment on campus. Study grant reduces the SES student economic pressure and increase their experience of learning from doing. Due to make higher education database open to the public, NDHU manage an institutional research (IR) team to establish a data storage system which can collect and analysis data from students, staff and other activities in campus. So that can help school to improve its decision making process.
Figure: Dong Hwa University has provided complete planning and subsidy measures about life, study, and future employability for SES students.
Link: https://www.ndhu.edu.tw/p/406-1000-167696,r4956.php?Lang=zh-tw
The social responsibility of NDHU is to build nexus with local elementary/middle schools, cultural organizations, communities and industries. Through the participation in social issue, educational service and industry needs, NDHU students and staff get attention on all aspects in Hualien area. For example, each summer and winter vacation, NDHU team up with local school to hold reading, science, and physical education camp, it can bring new and rich education resource into communities. Moreover, NDHU Industrial Innovation-lncubation Center assisted 26 student teams to participate internal and external competitions in 2019. One of them received subsidies each year in the U-Start Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of the Youth Department of the Ministry of Education.
Figure: Hualien County Government and NDHU have the cooperation agreement to promote the Strategic Alliance for “University Social Responsibility”.
Link: https://www.ndhu.edu.tw/p/406-1000-160191,r4956.php?Lang=zh-tw
To make NDHU global visibility, the following projects have been well organized.
Sticking on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure NDHU is a partner of international community. Provide more exchange programs with abroad colleges to improve intercultural exchange on campus. Providing better English-taught, Chinese language courses, and cultural activities assist international students merged with campus life. In fall semester 2019, NDHU oversea students had come to thousand who were from about 50 different countries.
Figure: NDHU progress ranking in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020. NDHU is the ranked top 10 of Taiwan universities, and top 6 of subject for computer science in 2020.
Figure: NDHU regularly organizes international exchange activities and strives to develop an international campus.
Link: https://epage.ndhu.edu.tw/files/14-1000-145158,r2390-1.php?Lang=en