NTNU Continues Taiwan Huayu BEST Program with University of California, Santa Barbara
After the cooperation last year with Penn State University and the University of California, Los Angeles of the 'Taiwan Huayu Best Program' this year, National Taiwan Normal University signed the second phase cooperation agreement of the 'Taiwan Huayu Best Program' with the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). With 70 years of Chinese language teaching experience of NTNU and the resources of UCSB, together we strengthen Chinese language teaching and promote Taiwanese culture. In the future, UCSB will send students to NTNU to learn Chinese, which is beneficial to building a bilingual learning environment of NTNU and the competitiveness of local students.
The signing ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Education. On June 2 this year, Taiwan time, it was held in physical and online at NAFSA 2022, the annual conference & expo of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. The ceremony was joined by Executive Vice President Frank Yung-Hsiang of NTNU, Chair Ya-Hsun Tsai of the Dept of Chinese as a Second Language and signed by Chun-Chi Li Vice President for International Affairs on behalf of NTNU while Chair Mayfair Yang of the Dept of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies signed on behalf of UCSB.
Political Deputy Minister Mon-Chi Lio of the Ministry of Education, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Camille P. Dawson, Deputy Assistant Secretary Ethan Rosenzweig for Academic Programs Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Director General of the Department of International and Cross-Strait Nicole Lee witnessed the signing ceremony. The Mandarin Training Center of NTNU has established a stable relationship with USCB for a long time. Under the facilitation of Executive Director Chao-Mei Tu, NTNU started an official cooperation with USCB.
Executive Vice President Frank Yung-Hsiang, Principal Investigator of the 'Taiwan Huayu Best Program' stated that the program is an important policy for Taiwan to expand the output of high-quality Chinese language education in response to the needs of international Chinese language learning. NTNU serves as one of the important promoters of Chinese language teaching, has integrated the resources of several units like Mandaring Training Center, Dept of Chinese as a Second Language, Higher Education Sprout Project Office, and Office of International Affairs and expended connection to sister schools around the world to affirm the status of Taiwan’s Chinese Teaching in the world.