President Flora C.I. Chang participated in the Summit of University Presidents from Macau, Hong Kong, and across the Straight and delivered a special speech on “TKU’s Three Circles and Five Disciplines of Education.” She explained that with TQM, TKU had been trying to train students’ academic skills, multi-dimensional and comprehensive abilities and team cooperative spirit with “Three Circles”: Professional Curriculum, Core Curriculum and Extracurricular Curriculum and “Five Disciplines of Education”: Conduct, Intelligence, Physical Education, Teamwork and Beauty. The Summit had keynote speeches, presentations and discussions about universities’ strategies and targets for internationalism, recruitment of highly qualified teachers and cultivations of excellent talents. More than 20 university presidents were invited. Taiwan University President Si-Chen Lee, Cheng Kung University President Michael Ming-Chiao Lai, Tsinghua University Vice President Ming-Chuen Yip were at the Summit, and TKU was the only representative for private universities in Taiwan.

President Chang felt that international higher education had been making fast progress, so Taiwan should double the effort to catch up. Universities across the Straight faced similar problems such as the importance of academic research, the necessity of re-orienting educational directions as universities should also emphasize life education beside teaching academic knowledge. The residential experiment of Lanyang Campus may provide a practical example in this regard while the various student clubs could also make contributions to it. She hoped that TKU students could set up their life and career goals early through extracurricular activities, academic studies and various kinds of counseling. ( ~Dean X. Wang )