NTNU Deepens Ties with Yamagata and Tohoku Universities
National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), one of only four universities nationwide designated as a Bilingual Benchmark Institution by Taiwan's Ministry of Education (MOE), recently showcased the tangible outcomes of that distinction through an international music exchange with two Japanese universities. Supplementary MOE funding enabled NTNU to further transform classroom learning into practical global competency. From 6-11 April, Dean of NTNU’s College of Music Prof. Hsiao-Fen Chen and the Department of Music Prof. Chia-Wei Chung led 10 students to Yamagata University, where they co-presented a joint concert before proceeding to Tohoku University in Sendai for an academic exchange visit. Since becoming partner institutions in 2013, NTNU and Yamagata University have held more than 10 collaborative activities, including short-term student exchanges, graduate research symposia, and international faculty lectures. This April, the partnership reached a landmark moment with the official launch of a master's-level dual-degree program, making the joint concert all the more significant. The centerpiece of NTNU’s Yamagata visit was a joint student concert designed to showcase the breadth of both universities' musical traditions. The program spanned multiple eras and styles performed in varied chamber music configurations, with a deliberate emphasis on Taiwanese contemporary composition. Highlights included British pianist Stephen Hough's reinterpretation of the beloved Taiwanese folk song “Wàng Chūn Fēng” alongside works by Taiwanese composer Fu-Yu Lin and NTNU Music faculty member Prof. Chiung-Yu Chen. The inclusion of these pieces reflected NTNU's distinctive role as a vanguard of Taiwanese musical culture and its capacity to project that heritage onto the international stage. The two universities' complementary repertoires created a genuine musical dialogue, with music serving as a bridge across language and national boundaries. Sendai’s Tohoku University was Japan's third imperial university, founded after Tokyo and Kyoto. This heritage added a rich historical and scholarly dimension to the exchange. NTNU faculty and students visited the lecture hall where the celebrated Chinese author Lu Xun once studied, as well as rare materials from Albert Einstein's visit to the campus in 1922. These encounters added to the vivid appreciation of the NTNU students regarding the depth of East Asian academic heritage. At Tohoku's Faculty of Education, located on the Kawauchi Campus, the delegation was welcomed by Dean Prof. Kojima Hideki, who shared insights into the university's development priorities and his own research. The meeting opened promising avenues for future academic and cultural collaboration between the two universities. NTNU's Department of Music holds a singular place in Taiwan's cultural landscape as the nation's oldest and most prestigious academic tradition in music. It has long served as the leading institution for music performance, scholarship, and education in Taiwan. In recent years, the department has actively participated in NTNU's English-Medium Instruction (EMI) initiative, integrating English as a vehicle for professional and critical discourse to strengthen students' international readiness. The Japan exchange exemplifies how NTNU translates its bilingual education framework into real-world international experience. Students who have developed professional fluency in English-medium academic settings are well equipped to represent Taiwan's musical and scholarly traditions on the world stage. NTNU's Office of International Affairs noted that follow-up exchanges and collaborative programming with both Yamagata and Tohoku universities are under discussion, with the new dual-degree arrangement expected to bring additional joint activities in the coming academic year.A Long-Standing Partnership
Engaging A Historic Japanese University
Bilingual Education in Action