Chinese Overseas Flagship in Taiwan: Center Established at NTU

The Language Flagship is a national initiative of the United States aimed to further the bilingual proficiency and bicultural literacy of US undergraduate students. The foreign languages selected for the program are Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, and Turkish. This June, the program established and based its Flagship Taiwan Center at NTU, marking another milestone in the history of Taiwan-US cultural and educational exchanges.

An opening ceremony was held for the Flagship Taiwan Center on October 29. Among the distinguished guests were Director William Brent Christensen of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)’s Taipei Office, Deputy Minister Szu-Chien Hsu (徐斯儉) of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NTU Executive Vice President Chiapei Chou (周家蓓), and Director of the Chinese Overseas Flagship in Taiwan Program, Prof. Der-Lin Chao (趙德麟).

The first class of the Flagship Taiwan Center (10-month Program) consisted of 22 elite students from the 12 US universities which offer Chinese Flagship Programs under the sponsorship of the Language Flagship. In particular, 5 out of the 12 higher education institutions are partner universities of NTU. After arriving in September, the students began to receive intensive training on specific fields and academic language in the first semester. The course is taught completely in Chinese, and the students are required to write a final paper in Chinese. In the second semester, the students will intern at related Chinese-speaking institutes to gain a truly immersive and professional language learning experience.

Most comprehensive and essentially the best in Taiwan, NTU is a research university with 11 colleges and a student body of over 300,000 (half of them are graduate students). NTU is ranked 120th in the recently released THE University Impact Rankings and 69th in the QS 2020 World University Rankings. Citing this background in her opening remarks, NTU Executive Vice President Chiapei Chou encouraged the students to grab the opportunity and make the most of the abundant resources on NTU campus, both academically and socially.

The Chinese Overseas Flagship in Taiwan Program is expecting to send 100 students to Taiwan each year. Executive Vice President Chou motivated the students to stay and pursue advanced studies at NTU, highlighting the university’s comprehensive and vibrant learning environment that ensures satisfactory and fruitful learning outcomes. Chou also strongly recommended the students to visit the diverse natural landscapes on NTU’s many campuses out of Downtown Taipei. For example, the Xitou Nature Education Area – a part the NTU Experimental Forest in central Taiwan – is one of the must-visits.