NTU Opening Ceremony Leads New Students to Start a New Life

The NTU opening ceremony was quite different this year. Titled “#NTU New Life,” the ceremony was one-of-a-kind with a series of meaningful activities presented during the event. In addition to inviting first-year students to take pictures and check in on Facebook, the University replaced traditional speeches and music playing routines with teacher-student sharing sessions, a series of interesting videos, and impressive school club performances.

The youthful opening performance brought by the NTU Cheerleading Team kicked off the opening ceremony, followed by a segment where President Chung-Ming Kuan acted as a host and introduced the Secretary-General and the Vice Presidents to the students. The following two activities, “Who do you know about NTU?” and “Let’s talk about NTU!” invited students to share their understanding and expectations of the University.

Next, NTU invited senior brothers and sisters to share their learning experiences on campus. Double major of the Department of Information Management and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering Chian-Yi Jian and Chin-Yu Tsai of the Department of Agricultural Chemistry shared their campus lives with the audience and answered questions from the teachers and students.

The University also added a new session to this year’s opening ceremony. The students had the opportunity to pose questions to President Kuan and the vice presidents. The humorous conversations between teachers and students filled the scene with a relaxed and happy atmosphere and shortened the distance between the students and the teachers.

Near the end of the ceremony, President Kuan reminded the students to broaden their horizons, be more open-minded, add more dimensions to learning, and have more ambitions. President Kuan also emphasized the importance of making independent choices and putting things into practice, hoping that the students can focus on their studies in the following four years and choose their career paths wisely in the near future.

The ceremony continued the tradition, presenting new students with limited-edition t-shirts designed by Yu-Sheng Tsai from the master’s program of the Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering. Inspired by traditional lattice windows, his design combined different lattice window patterns with the University’s natural and humanistic impression, conveying the idea of tranquility, calmness, and elegance.

This year, there are 4,594 first-year students and 5,496 first-year master’s and doctoral students. By holding this brand-new opening ceremony, NTU hopes to encourage students to get past the haze of the pandemic in the last two years and start a new life. NTU also expects the students to explore their interests, set goals, and live a fulfilling campus life.