NTU HIGHLIGHTS 66- International Corner

NTU Highlights 66– International Corner

NTU Felicitates Peking University on Its 120th Anniversary — “Fragrant as the Orchid, and Lush as the Pine”

Peking University (PKU) celebrated its 120th anniversary on May 4. NTU Interim President Tei-Wei Kuo led a delegation including Vice President for International Affairs Luisa Shu-Ying Chang, Secretariat Senior Executive Officer Li-Ju Chen, and Senior Clerk Chun-Yi Wei to deliver NTU’s heartfelt congratulations to PKU.

PKU is one of NTU’s strategic partners. In recent years, PKU and NTU have organized four intercollegiate symposiums, the PKU Day@NTU (2011, 2016) and NTU Day@PKU (2010, 2017), to strengthen their academic, administrative, and cultural partnerships. Upon arriving in Beijing on May 3, Dr. Kuo and the NTU delegation presented a beautifully handcrafted orchid sculpture, sourced from cypresses grown in NTU’s Experimental Forest in Xitou, with the inscription“, Fragrant as the Orchid, Lush as the Pine,” to PKU President Jianhua Lin. Dr. Kuo and Dr. Lin both affirmed that more interdisciplinary collaborations should be forged between the two universities.Dr. Kuo also invited Dr. Lin to visit NTU on November 15 to join its 90th anniversary celebration.

PKU rescheduled Beijing Forum, an event launched in 2004 and held at the end of the year, to May 4 so that it could coincide with the university’s anniversary celebrations. This year’s forum was themed“, World University Presidents Symposium and Beijing Forum 2018,” which was the visual and motif centerpiece for the anniversary. The event was graced by 261 presidents and vice presidents from 131 overseas universities and 130 universities in China. The forum also featured a video recording in which 20 presidents from some of the most prominent universities expressed their congratulations and discussed their visions of higher education.

Dr. Kuo arrived in Beijing on May 3 and traveled to PKU’s Linhuxuan (residence of missionary educator, John Leighton Stuart) for the video recording. He discussed the histories shared between NTU and PKU, academic collaboration efforts between the two universities in recent years, goals of higher education, and NTU’s missions. Kuo stressed that both NTU and PKU are premier educational institutes in their own right as well as internationally respected comprehensive universities. As the two share many similarities in education and research endeavors, they must stay adaptive to offer students a more flexible learning environment. Dr. Kuo also visited Director Hongwei Xia of the Office of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs, and Prof. Dongmin Chen of PKU’s School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to explore NTU and PKU’s future policy directions and administrative models. He also visited Dean of PKU’s School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Dr. Ru Huang, to discuss the development in artificial intelligence and information technology.

With this visit to PKU for its anniversary celebration, the NTU delegation delivered its congratulations while identifying new learning horizons to enhance academic excellence. We at NTU should also proudly promote our own strengths so that our faculty members, the student body, alumni, and guests could get to know, support, and celebrate NTU.