Delivered in NCKU North America Alumni Meeting
August 16, 2009

All the NCKU Alumni, Distinguished Guests and Ladies and Gentlemen:

Today, I came here with a little bit of heavy heart. As you know, the southern Taiwan sustained heavy damage in the recent typhoon and atrocious rain. Many villages are inundated, lives are lost and homes and roads are wiped out. NCKU, being in the center of this storm, has escaped with relatively minor damages, but the nearby communities were not so lucky. As I speak at this moment, there are still thousands of people missing or being isolated and waiting for rescues. NCKU Vice President Feng is back home right at this moment, mobilizing the NCKU community to engage in the immediate relief and rescue efforts now and subsequent reconstruction works later by asking our community to donate money, labor and our expertise in emergency response, medical care, land preservation, etc. These efforts will take long time and a lot of works. We welcome your participation. Please work with the NCKU administration to have a coordinated effort.

As a university president, there is no duty more profound and satisfying than meeting and addressing her alumni, for, as I said repeatedly on many occasions, university alumni are the soul of a university. The quality of education of a university is reflected in the quality of her recent graduates and life-long accomplishments of her alumni. On this account, I can say proudly that NCKU has done its share of nurturing model citizens and various entrepreneurs, professionals and skilled workers of the highest quality for our society. Most people in this room are the personification of what I mean. I salute all of you.

A university must perform three functions: Educate, Research and Serve. Education produces future innovators and leaders for the society; research produces new knowledge and technology that inspires human imagination and drives economic progress; and the service by the university to society and communities drives local and global prosperity. But most of all, a university nurtures global citizens.

I am proud to say that NCKU has done remarkably well on all these accounts. Our university was selected to receive a special funding from Ministry of Education, so-called “5-year, 50-billion project” to promote top-tier world-class universities. Our graduates consistently are rated the most favorite university graduates in the polls conducted among the top enterprises in Taiwan. With this special funding, our university has made remarkable progress in all three accounts: research, education and service in the recent years.

As you just saw from the film, your alma mater NCKU has undergone remarkable transformation in the past several years. There are many new buildings, including Chimei Electroncs Building, Social Science Building, The second NCKU Hospital Building, Alumni Center, and the Green Building etc. We have established NCKU Museum. Not only is this transformation evident in physical appearance and campus infrastructure, but also it is reflected in the subtle so-called “soft-power” of its faculty and students. In the 21st century, a successful citizen must possess not only good professional skills, but also humanistic grounding. He or she must have good interpersonal skills, world visions, creativity and leadership quality, i.e. possess 3 Q’s, namely, the EQ (emotional quotient), MQ (Moral quotient) and AQ (Attitude quotient). Perhaps you have noticed in recent years that the university publication “NCKU Journal” has undergone a total change-over; many alumni commented to me that it reflected the upgrading of humanistic spirit at NCKU. The campus is full of art and musical activities, and students are apparently more interactive. Our research output has increased substantially. We are ranked very high in several world university ranking systems. Recently, Engineering research at NCKU is ranked No. 30 in the world, higher than any other institutions in Taiwan. The alternative energy research is ranked No. 19 in the world. And Web-based ranking ranked NCKU as No. 101 in the world. In Taiwan, we are consistently ranked No. 2, ahead of all the other universities except NTU. We have attracted many distinguished scholars to NCKU. Most recently, the former Minister of Finance in Taiwan has become the Dean of College of Social Science at NCKU. We are proud of our accomplishments. But we are far from being in the top echelon of world universities. What do we have to do to fulfill our missions to educate, do research and to serve?

First of all, we need to internationalize. We are located in the southern part of Taiwan, which is traditionally more conservative and isolated. Unlike your generation, who sit in the audience here in the North America, today’s young people do not like to study abroad. Many of them do not care about the international events and communicate poorly in English. They are happy as they sit in the comfortable environment of their own little world. I am worried about their international competitiveness in the future. The future world requires the intercultural perspective, which appreciates diverse cultures. I want to bring the international presence to the NCKU campus. Only recently did we start to see an increasing number of international visitors, and students are increasingly involved in international activities. But, the current efforts are not enough. I hope that NCKU alumni will help to bring to their attention the importance of internationalization. Come back to your alma mater to interact with the younger generation. I propose that each of the NCKU alumni residing in foreign countries adopt a few of the current students, particularly freshmen or sophomore, of your own discipline and serve as their mentors. Interact with them. Your wisdom and experiences will make you as a better mentor than professors on the campus can provide. I call this “NCKU Alumni-Student Mentor” program. I will ask the NCKU Alumni Center to coordinate this activity.

Second, we need to recruit more masters to NCKU. NCKU has many excellent faculty members who excel in their own disciplines. Many of them are respected experts in their own field. But, being in the southern part, which was considered relatively remote until the recent operation of high-speed rail, it is hard to recruit outstanding faculty members. So, the faculty members in the “superstars” category are relatively few in number at NCKU. These shining academic superstars can serve as excellent role models for students. Their impact often extends beyond mere transmission of knowledge and skills. Recently we had many Nobel Prize winners visiting NCKU campus. They made such impacts that went beyond scientific exchanges. We need more of such kind of masters on our campus. We do not necessarily have to have Nobel Prize winners. Many of our alumni, who sit in this audience here, are respected masters in your own field. Please come to NCKU, for short or long periods of time. Your presence will make a whole world of difference to young people.

Third, we need to ask more from our students. In today’s world, particularly in the post-financial tsunami period, a university graduate has to be well prepared not only in professional training, but also in humanistic education. He or she must have more aggressive attitude, optimistic spirit, cross-disciplinary knowledge, team-work attitude, leadership, international viewpoint, and caring for society. These are tall orders. We universities are not demanding enough from our students; their student life is too easy. For example, students in NCKU can take 18 course units per semester and still feel relaxed, but in the U.S., half of that number of course units can exhaust a student. That means our courses are too easy. We need to implore our students to work harder; that also means our faculty needs to work harder themselves in teaching. These viewpoints are shared by many of our successful alumni. Many alumni told me that. We welcome your participation to work together.

Finally, I will speak of the role of alumni in university education. I often say that students are the muscle and the blood, and the faculty the bones, and alumni the soul of a university. The performance of alumni is the best benchmark of the accomplishments and spirit of a university. NCKU alumni have always been appreciated for their honesty and down-to-earth attitudes, which are cherished by the society. Besides, their loyalty and willingness to give back to their alma mater is legendary. The relationship between the university alumni and their alma mater is the best indication of the quality of education received by alumni while they were in the university. Because of the limited funding from the government, the development of a university in the future will depend on the extent of participation by the alumni. The alumni can help the university in various ways: first, financial donations. Of course, the large sum of money given to the university is highly valued. In the past two years, Bruce Cheng of Delta Electronics has given to the university more than 15 million U.S. dollars, which were used for research lectureship and construction of a research building and a green energy demonstration building. Besides that, we also value the annual giving by the alumni, even if it is a small amount, for, regular giving means consistent caring by the alumni. The alumni can also help the university by working with the current university students, serving as mentors. By talking to alumni, I often found that many alumni have great life experiences and core values, which are consistent with the missions of the university. They will serve as better teachers than the regular university professors, because students relate more with the alumni. More recently, many NCKU alumni, several of whom are here today, have also been helping the university by evaluating and marketing the intellectual properties of the university.

Today, I will call upon the alumni to perform another function for the university. Many of the NCKU alumni have retired or been close to retirement. Many of them are experts in their respective fields. They have expertise in academia, industry or business. I call upon all these alumni to return to NCKU to serve as visiting or permanent professors either short-term or long-term. The North American NCKU Association can serve as the coordinating office. For example, it can line up the willing alumni and send 4-5 alumni to serve as visiting professors to NCKU each year. By doing this, there will be a consistent stream of masters at NCKU every year. I call this “NCKU Rotating Alumni Masters” program. My fellow NCKU alumni, would you take up this challenge?

NCKU has made great strides in the recent years, but we have a long way to go to reach our goal of becoming a world-class university. However, with the help of everybody, including faculty, students and alumni, we can make it happen. So, today, I stand here to plead for the NCKU alumni world-wide to engage in three things for their alma mater: “Annual Giving Program”, “NCKU Alumni-Mentor Program” and “NCKU Rotating Alumni-Masters Program”. Let’s work together.

For NCKU, the future is now.
Thank you.

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