In its first anniversary celebration event held in the Chiaotung Campus on February 16, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) hosted a joint live stream with the Yangming Campus, Tainan Campus, and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Hospital to celebrate the merger between NYMU and NCTU. The event started off with a student choir singing the official songs of the two university, followed by preconcert talks by alumni of the Department of Management Science and a music expert—Kuo-Lun Huang—who then sang Beyond, a song written to commemorate the merger. Keeping the cultures and traditions of the two universities, NYCU hopes to develop new characteristics for itself.
According to the President Chi-Hung Lin, the first anniversary celebration event of NYCU is themed “Fusion” as a demonstration of and celebration for the cohesion, fusion, and mutual respect among the Chiaotung, Yangming, Tainan, and Yilan Campuses. NYCU’s rankings in the Times Higher Education and QS World University Rankings are both higher than the two universities before the merger. Additionally, 99 of its faculty members rank in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. NYCU also ranks first among all universities in Taiwan in the numbers of Future Tech Awards, Outstanding Technology Transfer Contribution Award, and Industry–Academia Small Alliance Program grants it has received from the Ministry of Science and Technology. These achievements demonstrate NYCU’s capacity and vision to become the top university. President Lin expressed his gratitude toward the administration team for their relentless effort as well as the alumni for their support and suggestions, all of which smooth the adaptation and communication processes necessary for different NYCU parties to reach an agreement.
Jen-Hsiang Chuang, the president of the National Yang-Ming University Alumni Association, stated that NYCU had accomplished numerous seemingly impossible tasks over the past year. The merging of two universities with completely different characters and cultures raises uncountable difficulties. However, this process is inevitable. The Alumni Association has been and always will be the strongest backbone of National Yang-Ming University. According to Chang-An Chiang, the president of National Chiao Tung University Alumni Association, the COVID-19 pandemic has secured Taiwan’s positions and visibility in the global semiconductor and medical industries. Given the former National Chiao Tung University’s and National Yang-Ming University’s strengths in the two fields, the merger is of particular significance, and jointly as NYCU, the two universities will surely overcome more challenges and goals to come.
The magnificent song Beyond was a project initiated by Stan Shih, an alumnus and the founder of Acer, and was written by music producer Kuo-Lun Huang (also an alumnus) upon the invitation of alumni Sam Duann and Jin-Cong Yang, who were presidents of Rocks Records and Wind Music, respectively. Through the song Beyond, Producer Huang hopes to connect the two universities so that they share the same passion, vision, and expectations, leave behind prejudices, and truly come together. In a choral performance during the event, Huang was the lead singer and was accompanied by a choir composed of faculty and staff members from the Chiaotung Campus, the NYCU Institute of Music string orchestra, and the Star Voice club from the Chiaotung Campus. The song has an acrostic arrangement, with four lines of the lyrics beginning by 陽 (yang), 明 (ming), 交 (jiao), and 大 (da)—combined, the four words represent Yang-Ming and Chiao Tung Universities. The song carries the hope that NYCU will always remember its origins, follow the predecessors, and lay path for the successors while continuing going beyond itself to develop new characters and features and to lead a new era.
NYCU has expansive campuses, each with its own landscapes and features. In the Come Visit NYCU event held during the anniversary celebration period, visitors are offered a chance to win prizes when they take photos or check-in on social media at 36 secret spots in the eight NYCU campuses located in Taipei, Hsinchu, Tainan, and Yilan. The event encourages visitors to explore the beauty of each campus and increase students’ identification with NYCU. Many students have checked-in at various spots during Lunar New Year and expressed that this event motivated them to visit other campuses and that they had a fruitful experience.
In the Outstanding Alumni Award Ceremony on February 19, 6 of the 11 award winners graduated from the former National Chiao Tung University and 5 from the former National Yang-Ming University. These outstanding alumni are the backbone of Taiwan’s electronic information and communication industry and the public health industry and make great contributions to Taiwan’s high-tech industries and efforts against the pandemic. On the same day, the opening ceremony of the Paul Han House, the home of the late Dean of the College of Medicine at the former National Yang-Ming University, was held. Dean Han was a pioneer in integrating medicine with engineering. The opening ceremony was held with NYCU’s first anniversary celebration in special memory of his character and vision as a medical educator in the early days.
Chinese version: https://www.nycu.edu.tw/news/3243/