National Cheng Kung University

Introduction

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), located in Taiwan’s ancient and cultural capital of Tainan, is one of Taiwan’s top research intensive universities and a leader in promoting industry-academia cooperation. With more than 1,200 faculty members, 22,000 students and 140,000 alumni worldwide, the university is best known for its science, engineering, medicine, management, planning and design. Since its establishment in 1931, NCKU has transformed from an engineering college into a comprehensive university comprised of 9 colleges, including Liberal Arts, Sciences, Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Planning & Design, Management, Social Sciences, Medicine, and Bioscience & Biotechnology, on 11 campuses. Occupying a total of 187 hectares of land, the 9 colleges along with its affiliated hospital are conveniently located in the downtown area of eastern Tainan. NCKU currently offers 42 undergraduate programs, (excluding Program of Bachelor’s Degree), 74 master’s degree programs, 53 doctoral programs and 17 master’s degree programs for working professionals. As a top-notch national university in Taiwan, NCKU has played a vital and critical role in creating Taiwan’s economic miracle by helping Taiwan to transform from an agriculture-based society to an industrialized economy during the 1960s and 1970s. Many excellent engineers devoted to manufacturing, construction and social services are cultivated in this oldest engineering university nationwide. Since the establishment of the Research and Service Headquarters in 1996, a total of more than 60 research centers, including the Research Center for Energy Technology and Strategy, Innovation Center for Advanced Medical Device Technology Center, Infectious Disease and Signaling Research Center and Advanced Optoelectronics Technology Center, have been founded to support teaching and research environment and promote cooperation among industry and academia. The 4 elite research centers are recognized by the Ministry of Education for their outstanding performance. Over the years, faculty and students have achieved great success in academia and research, which are reflected in the ranking of world university rankings and also in the number of publications in international journals. In addition, according to the ESI database, NCKU has published 18,333 papers in the last ten years and has respectively ranked the 24th and the 51th in the list of world top 100 universities respectively in the engineering and computer science fields. Inspired and enlightened by the University motto: “Discover the truth, devoted to knowledge,” NCKU students have been well-educated to become the most favored college graduates by local industries in Taiwan. Annual surveys conducted by prestigious Taiwanese magazines such as Common Wealth, Global Views and Cheers have ranked NCKU graduates as “industry favorites” each year since 1993. Notably, more than 100 of the NCKU graduates have become university presidents, and about 147,000 graduates have found gainfully employment in all walks of life around the world. NCKU has also achieved remarkable success in globalization. Not only has an English-speaking environment been built to attract hundreds of international students, but substantial academic ties have also been established with many world-class universities and institutes. NCKU currently has 751 international students, compared to 272 in 2006, which is a growth rate of more than 100%. In addition to its global ties, NCKU remains supportive of its home in Southern Taiwan. The relations among NCKU, the Southern Taiwan Science Park and the Kaohsiung Science Park are comparable to those among Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and the Silicon Valley. “The University educates future leaders with humanistic and professional grounding, creativity, global vision and social consciousness while promotes interdisciplinary research to benefit our society and mankind.” To advance National Cheng Kung University for a world-class top university, President Su is determined to establish a friendly campus environment for better interdisciplinary teaching and research and industry-academia cooperation and to bring about substantial international exchanges. With its research strengths in engineering medicine, as well as notable accomplishments of the University’s 4 elite research centers, the University intends to mobilize and integrate research capacities from partner universities of the T4 Alliance and from universities across the country in order to boost both academic and industrial competitiveness and elevate its international status to world-class level in the following 5 years.