Joint promotion of Taiwan Studies Initiative and Huayu BEST Program by President Wu and UCLA Chancellor
To deepen the cooperation between NTNU and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), President Cheng-Chih Wu led a delegation to our sister school in the United States on August 18th and met with the Chancellor Gene Block and several administrators and deans to further exchanged views on the Taiwan Huayu BEST Program partnership. Through this meeting, the friendship between the two universities was strengthened. The UCLA Asia Pacific Center also held a luncheon for the delegation and invited about 30 scholars and PhD students to join.
UCLA is ranked 44th in world universities and is known as one of the top universities in the world. The relationship between NTNU and UCLA started back in 2006 when the Department of Education signed a departmental MOU with Paulo Freire Institute. With increased exchanges academically between the two sides, the cooperation was raised to college level. In 2017, under the connection of NTNU distinguished alumna Prof. Shu-mei Shih who teaches at UCLA, UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative was established jointly by College of Liberal Arts of NTNU and UCLA. Students from both sides visited each other for short term visits, courses, teaching, and research. Many Taiwan related speech and seminars were held in UCLA, which is helpful in the Taiwan-US relationship diplomatically In the Taiwan Huayu BEST Program of the Ministry of Education in 2021, NTNU choose UCLA as the partner in phase one. Based on our years of cooperation, we elevated the Chinese teaching capacity in Western United States together. This year, we have sent an excellent Chinese teacher to UCLA and we are expecting 24 UCLA students coming to NTNU to learn Chinese in the future.
In addition to the cooperation with UCLA, NTNU also enjoys a number of cooperation with other campuses of the University of California, including the university-to-university MOU with the University of California, Irvine. The College of Liberal Arts, the College of Music, the College of International and Social Sciences also signed College level MOU with University of California, San Diego. The College of Science and the University of California, Berkeley, College of Chemistry, have worked together on Top Research Talents Program and University of California, Berkeley Santa Barbara (UCSB) is the partner in second phase of the Taiwan Huayu BEST Program of NTNU. Currently, NTNU has completed the selection of Chinese teachers. Two Chinese teachers are expected to go to UCSB this fall to conduct Chinese language teaching and becoming one of the major boosts in promoting the Chinese teaching market in the Western United States.