News

A FOREIGN LANGUAGES WEEK SPINS OUT ITS CHARM

The Foreign Languages Week (FLW) that was held by the six foreign languages departments of TKU opened last week on Tamsui Campus. Suddenly, the campus was filled with exotic languages, music, dances, plays and food. For students of non-language majors these activities to help experience foreign customs and cultures first-hand were entirely a novelty.

A NIGHT OF RECREATION IS FILLED WITH PLEASURE AND FUN

The 7th ‘Recreation (Kang-Fu) Night’ was held at the Student Activity Center on May 8. The party venue was turned into a ‘movie theater’ with the theme of ‘Please forgive me if I have scared you’. It started with a ‘Skeleton Dance’ to the play ‘The Time Machine’ and a rap on ‘Love on Television’. All audiences reacted to the plot and acting so positively that the whole Activity Center was filled with laughter, screams and applauses throughout the entire evening.

RESULTS OF STUDENT UNION AND CONGRESS ELECTION REVEALED

The results for the 10th Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the Student Union Election finally emerged last Thursday. The only two running mates, Li Ru-Cheng, a sophomore of Department of Transportation Management and Lin Yi-zheng, also a sophomore of French Department won decisively with 4730 votes and became both the Chairperson and Vice Chairperson without any real challenges. The votes they won are the highest in the history of Student Union. The other record-breaking event was the establishment of on-line crosschecking which was considered efficient and convenient.

WU FU KANG LITERATURE AWARDS ANNOUNCES WINNERS

The results of the 20th Wu Fu Kang Literature Awards were announced on May 7. Yang Ying-jing, a fourth year graduate student of the Institute of Chinese Studies has won both the top awards in both fiction and the short story categories. She was very thrilled by the news even though winning has not been a new experience to her. She won the category of ‘creative poetry’ on a previous occasion. This year the same category goes to Chou Wei-hong, a sophomore at the Chinese Department. Gao Pei-hwa, a junior at the night school of the Chinese Department won the ‘prose’ category.

CHINESE CLASSICAL BEAUTY CONTEST UNVEILS AT CHUEH-HSUAN GARDEN

The Chueh Hsuan Chinese Garden was turned into a beauty pageant venue on May 10 attracting hundreds of people, well, mostly women to select a Chinese classical beauty. For some hours, the Garden was turned into an ancient Palace Garden filled with beautiful young women waiting to be picked by the Queen to be her ladies-in-waiting.

TWO SEMINARS ON FRIDAY INVITE PARTICIPATION

There will be two seminars on Friday, May 21, on Tamsui Campus. The first one is organized by the Division of General Education and Core Curriculum (DGECC) on “Sex Industry and Moral Thinking”. The organizer has invited several experts on gender theories such as the writer Ho Chuan-zue, who is known as Taiwan’s radical feminist to give talks on ‘Rights of sex workers and Management” and related issues.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION OF THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT OPENS THIS WEEK

The Department of Electrical Engineering will exhibit its work at the Exhibition Hall of the Business Management Building from 18 to 21 of May. There will be exhibits of creative work provided by 13 labs, which include remote controlled ‘helicopter’ and ‘electrical ant’ and AI robotic footballers. A Robotic David Beckham will even be there to demonstrate football.

EXPULSION FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS HAVE BEEN REVISED

Rules for the minimum credits for graduate students on Master and Ph.D. programs have been softened after a heated debate by the Office of Academic Affairs on May 12. It has been decided that instead of a 12 credits threshold, a student will be expelled only when he/she has earned 0 credits after one year of study. Once President Chang approves of this revision, it will become effective in the coming semester.

COURSES ABOUT ‘SYSTEM ON CHIP’ START IN THE COMING SEMESTER

Those who do not have a science or engineering background need not despair, as they will have an opportunity to work in the electronic sector if they participate in the ‘System on Chip’ courses run by TKU. These courses will create talents that are equipped with a multidisciplinary repertoire in semi-conductor applications. These people will be in high demand once they graduate from these courses, which emerged from the government concerns over Taiwan’s semi-conductor manufacturing industry. The Ministry of Education (MOE) has requested, including TKU, 6 universities to run similar courses.

529 PH.DS COME FOR 56 JOB OPENINGS

TKU plans to recruit 56 faculty members to 36 departments for the 2004 academic year. According to statistical information, provided by the University Personnel Office, there have been 529 qualified academics mostly Ph.D. holders, who made an application. The ‘hottest’ department which attracted the most applicants for 2 positions (namely, 2 out of 67 applicants) was the Division of General Education and Core Curriculum (DGECC), followed by the Institute of Life Sciences and the Department of Mathematics in the College of Sciences (2 out 35 and 1 out 31 respectively).