Tamkang University has continued to conduct self-improvement following a release of the result of MOE’s evaluation on university department and graduate institute. The total of 74 departments and graduate institutes that have passed the evaluation has made proposals to upgrade themselves according to the instructions detailed in the MOE evaluation reports, while five institutes that fall into the MOE Watch List decided to conduct reforms.

Among the five in the watch list, the Institution and Department of History and the Graduate Institute of European Studies (PhD program), has filed for appeal to the MOE, while the Graduate Institute of Life Sciences wasmerged into the Department of Chemistry, and the two departments in Lanyang campus, Department of Multicultural and Linguistic Studies and Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management are moving toward transformation and renaming. The evaluation center will continue to monitor these five departments and graduate institutes, and the center’s staff are scheduled to visit these five units of TKU on March to May, 2011.

Those who passed the MOE evaluation all expressed their will to conduct further improvement in accordance to the suggestions made in the MOE reports. The Department of English said they will continue to adjust its courses and its faculty structure; the Department of Industrial Economics will set up an ad hoc committee to do follow up to the evaluation, while the Graduate Institute of Educational Psychology and Counseling is going to urge their graduates to join the exam to become counseling psychologists.

For those who are in the MOE watch list, they are doing even more efforts in reforms. Dr. Lin Chen-jung, Chair of the Department of History, said that they are looking into their MA students’ learning progress and the credits they lack, which will used as information for future course planning. Dr. Kuo chiu-ching, Chair of Graduate Institute of European Studies noted that they are closely monitoring the graduation schedule for their PhD students. They are also going to stipulate that those PhD students who have completed their required credits have to report to the institute on their latest progress in thesis writing. Dr. Wu Chia-li, Chair of the Department of Chemistry said that the merge of her department with the Graduate Institute of Life Sciences is good news for her department, for having more professors specialized in biological sciences will allow her students to learn more about the science as early as in the undergraduate stage.

Meanwhile, in TKU Langyang campus, Dr. Liou Ay-hwa, who doubled as Dean of College of Entrepreneurial Development and Chair of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, said that his department will undergo a huge reform in curriculums. He also noted that the department will continue to hire new faculties including foreign professors, in the aim to meet with the internationalization policy of the Langyang campus. Dr. Cheng Chin-mo, Chair of Department of Multicultural and Linguistic Studies, said his department will continue to enhance of training students’ language skills to comply with the whole English-language education objective of the Lanyang campus. The department will also work on departments and graduate institutes integration as well as hiring new faculties, building new language labs for language courses. ( ~Yeh Yun-kai )