4/24-A Meeting between the President and the Fourth-year Students: A Forum for Experience Sharing and Reflection Exchange

• 2018-04-25

On the eve of graduation, the President always manages to find time to pay a visit to Lanyang Campus to discuss what the students have learned in the previous year overseas. Chaired by President Flora Chia-I Chang, the forum was attended by Provost of Lanyang Campus Dr Jyh-Horng Lin, Dean of College of Global Development Dr Andy Liou, the departmental Directors, full-time teachers, administrative staff, and all the fourth-year students returned from overseas colleges.
    The President kindly told the fourth-year students that they had become fourth year students in a blink of an eye since she first met them at the High Table event in their first year in college. For the past thirteen years since 2005, many students have graduated from the campus. Since the establishment of the Lanyang Campus, 3-All Policy has been the distinctive educational development. Nowadays, both the school software and hardware have matured. The teachers have devoted great love and patience to the students. The President would like to hear the students’ overseas experience and their reflection on it since they had gone overseas in their third year, as well as their suggestions for school. The President mentioned that she had visited more than two thirds of our sister schools, and thus the schools which have received wonderful recommendation from the exchange students and which take great care of our students have been chosen to accommodate our students for overseas study. This overseas experience would certainly benefit the students’ graduate school study or work in the future. The students took the opportunity of the forum to make suggestions for the school, helping this third-year-abroad policy improve, and its satisfaction degree grow year by year.
Then it was time for experience sharing. The students who spoke up all expressed their deepest gratitude to the school for providing them with the opportunities of studying abroad, learning to be independent in one year, broadening their horizon, enhancing their communication ability, etc. They also exchanged their ideas with the President, which was deeply appreciated by her. Some of the opinions were excerpted as listed below:
    Wu Zhongyu from Department of English Language and Culture shared his experience of studying at Ritsumeikan University. He suggested our college could hold more academic conferences and forums, so that the students could have more opportunities to get involved in academic activities. The President responded that the Lanyang Campus should plan to hold more academic conferences and forums, and hoped the students could participate in these activities.
    Zhou Min from Department of International Tourism Management studied at The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management in order to experience unfamiliar culture. She shared her experience of serving an internship at that school for half a year. That is, how she had met up with the global elite at the school or the hotel, and how she witnessed the ways to solve problems in different cultural contexts.
    Chen Yulin from Department of Innovative Information and Technology studied at California State University, Long Beach. He shared that the courses were often conducted in group discussion. He had learned to be more independent and responsible. There are multiple ethnic groups and languages in California, and, as a result, he gained some social skills and self-management ability. Thus he suggested the Lanyang Campus should have advertised this fine project on a larger scale.
The President took herself as example. When she studied at National Chengchi University, four years passed quite quickly. She only realised what study really meant to her when she studied abroad. Being abroad made her become independent and responsible, construct language-expression ability, know Taiwan more, and understand the spirit of group discussion is to study in advance.
    Finally, the President was delighted to find out that the students participating the forum this year have improved a lot in terms of their way of talk and attitude. The contents of their suggestions were quite practical, which also proved that the founder’s educational ideal was worth promoting. Apart from professional expertise, English ability is everyone’s best asset. In fact, you are the best endorsers of “Third-Year-Abroad” program, because you have bravely learned to be independent abroad and have cultivated taste based on multi-culture. Finally, the President wished the students to be healthy and happy, and to see them at the graduation ceremony.