Being a student adviser is a full-time job that allows very little down time, as some of the professors that have been elected as the 52 best advisers this year will tell you. Apart from professional knowledge, most advisers need to provide their students with flexible life philosophy, strategies to apply to foreign universities, optimism for the future learning, console for depression, and sometimes just pure entertainment by simply being funny: all requiring extra time and tremendous interpersonal skills.

For example, Cheng Chin-mo, the adviser for the Department of Global Politics and Economics at Lanyang Campus, has spent a great deal of time comforting and communicating with his students, who are in fact the first recruits of the newly set-up campus. Since they are the first year students in a new residential campus with an unusual mission, they have encountered issues that are unknown to others. Their anxiety and confusion are foreseeable. However, Through Professor Cheng’s supervision, his students have slowly adapted to the new environment, and no longer see changes and unconventionality as threats.

As for Professor Chen Chi-szu of the English Department, it is his second year consecutively to be elected as one of the best advisers. No wonder, his tasks in the past two years have been daunting, since he has being dealing with students with serious mental health issues. With his patient and sensitive guidance, some of the crises have been dissolved already. Chen Pau-wen, a professor from the Chinese Department, also needs to handle similar issues among his students. He tries to help those with physical disability with various means to open up their world. What is vital is his efforts in ensuring that students’ parents, department and the university are constantly in contact with one another for better communication. Such a proactive attitude is crucial in advising students, closely followed by Hsia Shao-chun, the military officer, who is also the adviser to one of the classes at the Department of Economics. He monitors students’ attendance vigilantly, and contact them immediately when they miss a few classes. Through this kind of careful monitoring, he was able to deal with serious incidents such as traffic accidents and even issues of personal harassment and stalking.

Some other advisers use technology to keep abreast of their students. Professor Chao Ron-yaw, who advices a freshman class at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, utilizes e-mail system to “speak” to his students regularly. Professor Pan Tse-weio of the Department of Management, similarly, uses mobile, e-mail, and instant messages on the net to communicate with his students around the clock. He is very popular among his students, which may put down to his son, who is well-known pop-singer in Taiwan. Like son, like father, Professor Pan is outgoing, entertaining, and a born performer.

Some advisers use more traditional ways to bond with their students, such as inviting them home to get to know the family members. Either way, the lucky ones are definitely the students of TKU, who are blessed with such a diversity of great mentors. (~ Ying-hsueh Hu )