Being awarded the second stage grant for the “Aim for the Top University Plan” in 2008 by the Ministry of Education, NSYSU intensively broadens it’s global vision and promotes cultural exchanges. With this particular mission a delegation from NSYSU including University’s orchestra-in-residence ‘Baroque Camerata’ visited renowned universities as well as overseas Taiwanese in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C. from March 29 to April 10 this year.

 

During the interview Director of Baroque Camerata Mei-Wen Lee, also a professor of Department of Music, expressed a great satisfaction with the trip. Musicians had the chance to experience another culture as well as the joy of cross-cultural communication. During their visit to North-western University in Chicago after the performance of Baroque Camerata local orchestra also performed for them.

 

This time the program of NSYSU orchestra was very special: besides performing music written by US contemporary composers, Baroque Camerata also played eight Taiwanese Folk Songs, re-arranged by Szu-Hsien Lee, Assistant Professor at NSYSU.  The folk songs were also represented in their album Splendor-When Western Baroque Meets Taiwanese Folk Songs, which was nominated by Taiwan’s Golden Melody Award, 2007.

 

Definitely, the performance of Baroque Camerata brought great delight to Taiwanese emigrants of first and second generations, as they could listen to the songs of their homeland. International community as well as musicians themselves witnessed that Taiwanese folk songs can be performed and be well accepted abroad. Professor Lee admitted that it is the duty and the mission of Baroque Camerata to introduce the beauty of Taiwan to the world. In order to realize their mission this summer Baroque Camerata is planning to record another album and to promote the city of Kaohsiung. Orchestra wants to record a special DVD, where Taiwanese Folk songs will be played on the background of beautiful scenery of Kaohsiung. It is particularly important to make our city known as World Games 2009 will be held in Kaohsiung.

 

According to Mei-Wen Lee music is not something domestic but rather the beauty belongs to the world.  So, she hopes the academic exchange will be established between NSYSU and the universities they visited: University of the West (Los Angeles), Northwestern University (Chicago), and University of Maryland (Washington, D.C.).

 

Just a reminder, next concert of Baroque Camerarta with beautiful name Sweet Childhood is on June 19 in NSYSU. Orchestra will be performing Taiwanese folk songs, in other words, it will be an evening of musical memories of childhood. The special feature of the concert is a world- known violinist with a very old violin made by famous Italian master.

 

Don’t miss the chance and remember to get the ticket in advance!

 

The 2008 Southern Region Spring GetTogether for overseas compatriot students was held at NSYSU on March 31, 2008. The event attracted more than 500 overseas Taiwanese students studying at the high schools and colleges in the southern region of Taiwan to the campus.

The event was opened by Minister Fu-mei Chang of Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission and Vice-President Kin-lu Wong of National Sun Yat-sen University, and followed by a series of performance brought by students from various universities. The first show was a stunning presentation of the famous Festive Drum, a traditional drum performance originated from southern Malaysia to celebrate the 24 seasonal phenomena of a year. The drummers are Malaysian students of National Chung Cheng University. More performances such as Songkran Festival Dance, Indonesian dance, Traditional costume show, and musical pantomime presented the cultures of the students’ countries of expatriation. NSYSU students impressed the audience by the Glowstick Dance and Hsiang-Sheng (the Chinese style stand-up comedy.)

 

Participants were quite happy with this year’s arrangement of the campus tour, especially the visit to the old British Consulate at Takao, a historical site (now a café) right outside the front gate of the University. The Consulate offers a wonderful panoramic view on the city and the port of Kaohsiung.   

 

Bon-Yen Wu, chief coordinator of the event, said "We are pleased to invite all the overseas university students to take part in this most important and must-attend event in this year. But I was afraid at the beginning that no body got the time to help out and we might have trouble organizing the activities.  Luckily, many junior and senior students showed up that day and helped a lot.  Thanks to all of them, the shows were perfect."

 

The GetTogether was jointly sponsored by Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission, Ministry of Education and National Sun Yat-sen University.  The event was ended by a climax of the drawing of lots; nearly one hundred participants went home in satisfaction with prize in hand.  

 

Over the years, more than 160 thousand overseas Taiwanese students have come back to Taiwan to study. 

What did you do for the Earth Day? Took public transportation instead of driving a car or riding a motorcycle? Turned off the lights for one hour like most of the cities around the globe did? For the past decade, people around the world put emphasis on the environmental issues that are hugely concerned to our lives. The truth is, we should take the earth day concept into our daily life as an Earth Year. Here’s how NSYSU students bring the concept into the school life.

 

On the weekend before April 22^nd, nearly eighty members of student clubs -Tzuchi Volunteers, Yong Volunteers and Windsurfing Club initiated a clean beach campaign to help picked up trash on the Hsitzewan Beach. Members were divided into four groups named as Wind, Fire, Water and Earth, the four elements of the nature. While people were enjoying their leisured afternoon on the beach, the volunteers were trying to keep the environment clean by picking up cans, plastic bags, Styrofoam products, and drifting tree trunks with their hands or tools.

 

The advisor of TzuChi Youth Volunteers in NSYSU, professor Wu Chou Chi said, “This activity is not only an echo of the Earth Day, but also a reminder for us to keep the beautiful scenery of NSYSU campus. We would like to protect this wonderful beach in our campus, and also enhance the connection between the community and the University.”

 

Besides picking up the trash of the public place, keeping our own living area clean can be another echo to the topic. The Dormitory Management Committee held the first dormitory cleaning contest on April 27, winners of the contest will be awarded with 5,000 NTD! “By recycling properly, the quantity of trash can be reduced; by cleaning the air conditioners, they can function better and use less electricity. These are the details we usually ignored,” said a student living in the girls’ dorm.

 

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s make Earth Day every day in our lives!

Soldiers work together to win a battle; colleagues team up to get a million-dollar project; students collaborate together to solve problems. As you can see, collaboration is of high importance in this fast-changing society. Therefore, NSYSU also steps out and aligns itself with different universities. The school not only launches exchange programs with sister schools all over the world, but also strengthens its ties with academic institutes in Taiwan. Some schools are famous for philosophy, the others are good at economics, and still the others are well known for management. Because of collaboration, students can have easy access to all the resources from different schools. It seems like you are studying in different universities at the same time. How exciting it is! Recently, NSYSU has successfully established another two collaboration plans with two different brilliant universities. So, let’s take a look!

 

A few days ago NSYSU, National Cheng Kung University and National Chung Hsing University officially declared that they have established the “T3” league. This league is focusing on lecturing, experience sharing and research cooperation. Aggregating all the members from three schools, the T3 League will include over 45 thousand students and 2500 teachers which will form the largest academic collaboration league in Taiwan. From now on, students are able to choose whatever courses they like in different schools. Each school will recognize all the courses and credits. Furthermore, schools will establish a variety of inter-school research centers to allow researchers to be more efficient and have access to more resources. 

 

The President of NCHU stated that the higher education in Taiwan has not enough budget and resources especially in the southern part of Taiwan; therefore, by collaborating with other universities, students will be more competitive and more likely to develop their potentials. “Students from these three universities have similar qualities and academic standards. With this alignment, the students not only can share more academic resources, but can also take turns to hold different conferences, events and competitions,” said the President of NCHU. The T3 League will play a key role to balance the gap between the large northern schools and the southern ones. The location of the schools promises that the T3 League will bring excellent human resources, and boost the economy in southern Taiwan.

 

On the other hand, we believe that to integrate humanity and management is an urgent task for now. Therefore, NSYSU chooses to reach an agreement with National Taiwan Normal University, tending to enhance the relationship with NTNU, the largest and the most prestigious normal university in Taiwan. The President of NTNU stated that NTNU is specialized in humanity and art, while NSYSU is well known for management and possesses a well-developed college for marine studies. With NSYSU’s experience and NTNU’s resources and connections, two schools would be able to build up more courses and opportunities for their students. Furthermore, NTNU is going to exclusively provide students from NSYSU with the opportunity to join the international activities held by NTNU, and interact with all the international students. “NTNU has the largest and the most famous CSL (Chinese as a second language) center in Taiwan. 1200 students from 60 different countries come to NTNU to study Chinese. This will be a great model and example for NSYSU’s Chinese Language Center,” the President of NSYSU stated. 

 

According to the alignment agreement, two schools will work together on academics, teaching experience sharing, and research development.  They will also set up long distance teaching, and information sharing via the Internet, and organize conferences together. Students will be able to choose courses in NTNU from next semester onwards, making the two schools closer than ever. Although one is in Taipei and the other one is in Kaohsiung, two schools believe that after the collaboration distance will no longer be a problem. Again, this is another huge benefit for the students.

 

Not only NSYSU but also other schools are all finding sister schools and partner institutes, and strengthening their ties with different universities around the globe. This is definitely a trend. Are you ready to take class in different schools? Are you ready to make more friends from different areas? Are you ready to embrace the latest information and easy access to more resources? You’d better be ready, because collaboration is always the best policy!

In recent years, the construction of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) in Kaohsiung has been a much talk about topic not only in Kaohsiung, but also in Taiwan.  The construction has been planned by Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation(KRTC) since 2000, and in 2001, the construction began.

 

Originally, KRTC planned to build the MRT terminal station in NSYSU campus, right between the gymnasium and the College of Science. This plan would have been extremely convenient for visitors who want to visit Hsitzewan, as well as for staff and students who do not have cars or scooters. After the structural collapse of the O1 station in 2005 causing denting to several buildings in the neighborhood, the locals became worried about the problem of safety. The O1 station was built on the abyssal fan near by the Kaohsiung Harbor, the geology there was not very good for the construction.  To address their concern, the residents there invited Lwo, Shih-Hsiung, a legislater from the district, to negotiate the safety issue with KRTC. On the other side, the authority of National Sun Yat-sen University was concerned about the flow of visitors at the MRT station affecting the life in the campus. However, the strongest opposition came from the community.  The residents and store owners of the neighborhood were afraid that the crowd brought by the MRT would not bring business opportunity to the community if the station was built in the campus. Because of these reasons, the project was nipped in the bud. The terminal station is now located about seven hundred meters away from NSYSU campus.

 

The KRTC tried to cooperate with National Sun Yat-sen University at the MRT base of Ta Liao.  For many years, there has been a shortage problem of student dormitory at the university, the KRTC proposed the difficulty to be solved by building residence halls near the MRT base of Ta Liao. The security card of the dorm could be integrated with student ID card and MRT's “I Pass” prepaid card.  The idea was not favored by most NSYSU students; it would be too far and too expensive to commune by MRT. The plan didn’t continue.

 

The authority of KRTC estimated that students would make up the majority of passengers using MRT for transporation. But they are also aware that it’s not easy to change people’s habit from riding motorcycles to MRT in Kaohsiung.  People here are used to riding motorcycles and scooters.  Many NSYSU students have motorcycle licenses, so the authority doubted that the MRT would take part in the NSYSU campus in a short period of time.

 

Despite all the controversy surrounding the consruction of KMRT, people were quite excited when it finally opened on March 9, 2008. KRTC offered free rides for the opening month, and attracted more than 7 million people to experience and enjoy the new form of transportation that hopefully will change the way people move in the greater Kaohsiung area.