Last month from May 15 – 31, numerous academic departments at the TKU Tamsui Campus took part in a “department self-assessment and on-site evaluation”. The evaluation was undertaken by 19 academic departments from four of TKU’s colleges, including the colleges of Liberal Arts, Science, Foreign Languages and Literature, and the Graduate Institute of International studies. The TKU Chief Audit Executive, Dr. Pai-ti Ching, explained that both this year and next year (2013), TKU will hold evaluations of academic departments. The following year, it will conduct a teaching assessment that will cover all academic colleges and departments. The purpose of doing so is to thoroughly prepare for the department-based evaluation held by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan in 2015.

The Chair of the Department of Chinese Literature, Dr. Yin Shan-pei, said that those conducting the assessment have praised the department for its “culture and creative industries” series of courses, which bring out the truly unique nature of the department. However, they also observed that improvements could still be made by constantly modifying and changing course content to better reflect the changing face of society.

A number of departments shared findings from their self-assessments. For example, the Chair of the Department of Spanish, Prof. Wu Kuan, stated that the activities and conferences held by the Department have gained widespread approval and positive feedback. In the future, Prof Wu added, we will continue to increase the frequency of such events. Meanwhile, the Chair of the Department of English, Dr. Tsai Chen-Hsing, said that the department will in the future continue to invite overseas scholars to TKU to serve as exchange professors. In doing so, he hopes to enhance Tamkang University’s level of internationalization.