Visit by Queensland University of Technology Promotes Exchange and Cooperation with NTNU
Queensland University of Technology International visited National Taiwan Normal University on 2 June and conducted extensive discussions on possible areas for exchange and cooperation between the two universities with Dr. Elise Li, NTNU’s Associate Vice President for International Affairs as well as Dr. Yung-Cheng Shen, Dean of the College of Management, and Mr. Cheng-Yi Wu, AACSB Accreditation Manager. The QUT delegates were Mr. Paul Bolt, Executive Director of QUT International; Ms. Annie Chan, Regional Manager for North Asia; and Ms. Virginia Hung, Engagement Manager for Taiwan.
QUT is located in Brisbane, Australia's third largest city, and focuses on developing students with an international perspective and the ability to meet societal needs. It is one of Australia's fastest growing research universities. In the detailing of QUT’s history by Mr. Bolt, it became apparent that QUT shares a strong parallel with NTNU in how it developed from an institution primarily focused on teacher training to become a comprehensive university. In 1990, QUT merged with the Brisbane College of Advanced Education, providing it with similar educational resources as NTNU.
Likewise, Dr. Elise Li pointed out several aspects of NTNU that are highly relevant for student exchange with QUT. As a Bilingual Benchmark University designated by the Ministry of Education, NTNU offers a wide variety of courses taught in English. For QUT students who want to learn Chinese, the University has the largest Mandarin Training Center in Taiwan, which provides free Chinese language courses for exchange students. In addition, the National Taiwan University System, the university alliance that NTNU shares with National Taiwan University and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, brings together cross-university course options and opportunities for students to explore.
The College of Management at NTNU was accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in May 2023. Meanwhile, Queensland University of Technology is the first business school in Australia to be triple accredited by the world's top accreditation bodies, AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA. One of the requirements for maintaining AACSB accreditation is to be active partners with other AACSB-accredited institutions. Therefore, NTNU’s College of Management Dr. Shen and AACSB Accreditation Manager Mr. Wu discussed with the visiting delegation about the action plan for establishing a cooperative relationship between the two faculties.
Regarding future cooperation, the visiting delegates asked if NTNU could develop more short-term summer courses to provide additional opportunities for QUT students who are unlikely to become semester-long exchange students in order to increase QUT student mobility. Through this visit, the two universities were able to understand more about their commonalities so as to develop best areas of cooperation.