Dr. Clement Chang, founder of Tamkang University, announced on September 1 that TKU would enter its 4th phase of development as Lanyang Campus in I-lan County starts its student enrollment in the year 2005.

The span between the year 1950 when TKU was established as Junior English College until the year 1980 in which TKU was known as Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences was considered the first phase. The second phase started from 1980 until 1996, a preparation period for the TKU's development as a fully-fledged university. TKU entered its 3rd phase in 1996 as its Chueh-sheng Memorial Library was newly built, ushering in a new era of Internet Instruction and Learning on Campus.

Prior to the beginning of new semester in September this year, a seminar hosted by TKU President Horng-jinh Chang was held. Two vice presidents, 10 deans of colleges, heads of the academic office, library, information center, educational development center, long-distance teaching unit were all invited to attend. At the meeting, Dr. Clement Chang pointed out: "Today's meeting is a milestone for TKU. It is essential to everyone here to carefully ponder how to make progress in each department and college for TKU, which will enter its 4th phase of development as the Lanyang Campus in I-lan County starts students enrollment." At the seminar, each of the 10 college deans was asked to set up a short-term plan for the years 2003-2005, a 5-year intermediate-term project for 2006-2010 and a long-term project for 10 years 2011-2020. "TKU needs to make continued progress. Besides ranking at the top of private universities, TKU must become competitive with prestigious national universities," insisted Clement Chang.

Chang explained that first, a guidepost must be found out. For example, a famous international sister university or a top national university in Taiwan, such as National Tsing Hua University, can serve as our guidepost. How many years do we need to catch up with them in terms of research or teaching? Three years or five years? How much budget? What about the manpower that we need? Second, a well-written plan must be completed and implemented step by step.

President Chang Horng-jinh gave a speech entitled "The New Environment for Education in Taiwan" at the meeting. Based upon his collection of statistics, Chang discussed how to further develop our specialties and attract good students while the number of students enrolling in college is about to decline in Taiwan. As the Ministry of Education is setting up the standard for categorizing universities and an evaluation system, and is encouraging universities to be internationally evaluated, TKU should make more efforts to strengthen its advantages.

During the summer vacation, Clement Chang went to the US to do research in education. He brought back many books on higher education, from which 14 articles were compiled. The 10 deans were asked to read these articles and answer the 20 questions raised by Chang. An essay of 500 words must be written for each question. The answers will be collected and published by the Educational Development Center and used as reference for a future blueprint.

Dubbed as "The Ten-Thousand Word Book," these 14 articles were hotly discussed by the deans, who were requested to offer suggestions. Dr. Flora Chang, vice president for administrative affairs, an expert in education, expressed her appreciation of the valuable opinions offered by each dean at the seminar.