A team of nine members led by Flora C.I. Chang, the Vice President of Administrative Affairs returned from its friendly visit to the US on June 6. The Vice President in fact had returned one day earlier in time of this year’s commencement ceremony held at 10 p.m. on June 5 to give her good wishes to the graduates.

Her team visits overseas sister universities mainly in the US and Japan regularly. The team usually consists of TKU staff from Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, General Affairs, Accounting and Personnel, who are on a mission of learning from those universities and apply what they have learned/seen to improving TKU’s day-to-day work instantly upon their return. The results have been positive so far, so this year, which was their fifth overseas trip, they visited the University of Wisconsin-Stout, whose president and vice president came to TKU in April, the Winona State University in Minnesota and California State University, Stanislaus.

The team received warm welcome by the presidents, vice presidents and related officials from all three universities. One of TKU exchange student, Liu Pei-jin at the California State University came to meet the team specifically to share her experiences, which include her lament on the lack of entertainment on campus.

The team members also expressed what they found the most impressive on their visit. The Director of the Office of International Exchange and International Education, Chen Huei-mei, for example, is very upbeat about the imminent prospect of establishing the sister tie with the Wisconsin University-Stout officially. Hsu Xiu-fang from the Office of Academic Affairs was particularly impressed the university’s widespread on-line transcript system. She feels TKU should certainly adopt similar system, as it is time-efficient and economical. Chen Er-mei from the Office of Student Affairs praised the ‘identity’ shaping technique the Winona University has been deploying all over its campus by setting up signs that remind students that its university is a global player and the world is its campus. The other identity shaping technique is using the university color, which is purple everywhere on campus, as noticed by Luo Shu-hwa from the Office of Accounting. She suggests that TKU students should vote on a color that could best represent them and the school in order to create its individual identity. Lee Jing-jun, from the university library, on the other hand, found the library at Winona was excellent in providing palm tops for loan. Their library even offers 3-day workshop on the use of the device, Lee gushed.

UPDATE： 2010/09/27 CLICKS： 1615 DOWNLOADS：