News

TKU BEING PRAISED FOR TQM EFFORTS

A symposium dedicated to the concept and implementation of TQM (Total Quality Management) was held on 3/26 at TKU. At the opening, Dr. Flora Chang, the president of TKU thanked the two judges on the evaluation committee for the National Quality Award (NQA), Lu Ruei-yen, the CEO of Golden Technology Venture Capital Investment Corporation, and Lin Wen-Tsann, the Dean of the College of Management, National Chin-yi University of Technology, for their sharp observation and unreserved criticism during the second round of the evaluation. With their suggestions, Dr. Flora Chang continued, TKU could identify issues and seek solutions promptly. NQA is an award that was primarily designed to evaluate the TQM implemented in business organizations. The aim of the symposium was firstly to propagate the philosophy of TQM and NQA, and secondly to discuss as well as sharing experiences of implementation. The other topic that was also addressed at the meeting was the optimization of Internet presence, which, apparently, can benefit greatly from TQM.

AWARDS FOR PASSING ENGLISH PROFICIENCY TESTS ARE UP FOR GRAB

As a serious measure of encouraging students to improve their English proficiency, the university is using big money to lure the brave ones, the good ones, and even the timid ones who have hang-ups about learning English but would do it for money! The university is offering a total of NT$ 300,000 of grant money to people who can pass English proficiency tests with respectable scores. Because of this monetary reward, over 300 students have already enrolled to apply for this grant by taking these tests. Dr. Chen Gan-nan, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, who oversees this project, is very pleased with this number and pledged to find more money (up to NT$ 1,000,000!) than the existing amount so that more people will follow suit.

LEARNING DIFFICULTIES? HELP IS AT HAND WITH LA

Well, LA here dose not stand for Los Angles, and you certainly don’t need to travel to LA for resolving learning difficulties! All you have to do is turn to the so-called “Learning Ambassadors” (LAs) newly trained by the Student Learning Support Section (SLSS) that is under the Center for Learning and Teaching (CTA) of the university. These “ambassadors” were recruited by SLSS for the first time aiming to use peer power to convince and demonstrate to other students who have a less successful learning experience better ways of learning. SLSS organized a presentation not long ago informing to these ambassadors about SLSS’ work and events they will be hosting so that they can re-lay the information to other students when they are on their “diplomatic” missions.

DON’T WAIT, CREATIVITY!

DO YOU TANGO?

If you like tango music, don’t miss the first Taiwanese concert performed by the internationally well established Gracieux Trio at the Carrie Chang Music Hall on 4/10. Tickets are available at the Carrie Chang Fine Arts Center.

JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS HAVE A TASTE OF MAGICAL E-PEN

RECENT SURVEY SHOWS FACULTY HAVING TROUBLE TO DO RESEARCH

A recent survey conducted by the College of Management (CM) on the research productivity its faculty members were experiencing shows that (full) professors had a higher degree of dissatisfaction than that of associate and assistant professors as well as lecturers. 83% of professors ticked the lower end of the satisfaction scale, while 50% of associate professors, 66% of assistant professors, and 66% of lecturers did so. Chen Dun-ji, the Dean of the college, believes that this reflects the high standard many professors set for themselves, even though they are the ones who usually face a minimum external pressure in the need of conducting research.

HELLO, LONG LOST FRIENDS

The graduates of the 1988 class of the Department of Electrical Engineering just had their reunion to mark their 20th anniversary of the departmental alumni association. For this event, the organizer, Chen Yun, who is working for Cybertan Technology Inc., put in extra efforts to look for those classmates that had lost contact for years. Thanks to modern technology, he used internet resources such as 104 Man Power Bank and Google to locate them. Because of this, at least 50 strong alumni plus family appeared at the Chueh-hsuan Chinese Garden in Tamsui Campus for the reunion on 3/23. Some of them hadn’t seen one another for years before that day and vowed to keep better contact from now on. There had been other reunions in the past but none was comparable to the one this year in terms of attendance. With the presidential election this year, several alumni returned to Taiwan from abroad for voting, so the organizers, that also included Fang Yu-zhi, the CEO of Fomotech International Corp, were able to gather this impressive number of people under one roof.

TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS ARE NOT TOLERATED

According to the latest figure released by the Office of Military Education and Training(OMET), accidents caused by traffic violations increased considerably by the end of last year, involving at least 150 students, with one fatal casualty, 23 critically wounded and 126 suffered from minor injuries. Although the rate of fatality dropped from those of the previous year (which was 5), the number of critical injuries in fact increased by 14 cases. As a result, OMET is warning students about the importance of following traffic rules.