News

 

This year, NTNU was ranked the first in 50 universities in the category of Humanities, Law and Business in a research done by GV Monthly magazine. When it comes to academic achievement, NTNU has contributed the most research paper written in Chinese among Taiwan universities. On average, one faculty write almost 2.5 paper, which is significantly high compared to others. NTNU works closely with the industry and on average, one teacher contributes 1.2962 million of income by industry-university cooperative project, which is also the top in Taiwan.

 

President Wu Cheng Chih said that since 1994, the Teacher Education Act has passed, all universities could provide teachers' program. It was a shock to NTNU since its establishment and also a turning point. When people talked about NTNU, they would think that students don't have to pay for tuition and become teachers. When NTNU is no longer the only place for teachers' education and the ranking keeps falling. What shall we do?

 

At that time, there were discussions about name changing to 'He Ping (peace) University' because NTNU is located on He Ping East Road, to get rid of the word normal. After some research, they have found that only 30% or NTNU alumni work in education industry and the others work in all different kinds of fields. Hence, they decided to keep the original name and work on the communication between technology and the humanities.

 

Transformation of a school is never easy. First, they have to get rid of the stereotypes of some department names. For example, there's one department named Information and Computer Education, which is similar to Science Engineering Departments of other universities. However, the 'education' in the name is confusing to future students and their parents and they would skip this department while choosing what to study. If the name is changed abruptly, they would face a backlash from professors and alumni. Hence, they formed a Graduate Institute for Information and Computer Education first, put the educational department under the graduate institute and established the new Department of Computer of Science and Information Engineering. It's an effective way of gradual transformation.

 

The second step is to decentralize teacher's education in all departments. President Wu required all departments to think of one or two new features of their own, which has to be connected to other departments at some point practically. Before, the majority of required and elective courses can be added up to almost 100 credits. Now students are required to finish 75 credits. This makes the teacher think what the core of their departments should be and open up opportunities for students from different departments by offering selective courses. As for the tradition of teacher's education, a College of Teacher Education was founded so that teachers from different backgrounds can develop interdisciplinary teaching methods.

 

'Norm can be a burden as well as an advantage. I managed to go through the transformation by keeping the name but changing the image.' Concluded by Wu.