The opening ceremony of the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival has just been held in the NTU Sports Center last weekend. The job-recruiting event, homecoming of the NTU graduates, the colleges’ expo, and the promotion of NTU students’ clubs were also held at the campus along with the opening ceremony no matter how heavy the rain was. Lots of guests, NTU students and graduates joined the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival to enjoy the activities in spite of the spring showers during the weekend.

While celebrating the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival by throwing the opening ceremony, President Si-Chen Lee stated that the first NTU Azalea Festival held by the former president, Wei-Chao Chen, was originally aimed for presenting the NTU spirit in addition to promoting the enrolls as well as showing the beautiful campus and the diversity of the NTU activities, including arts, science, and the social studies. It has the significant meaning to hold the NTU Azalea Festival during the azalea season at the campus, featuring and promoting the prosperity and the beauty of the National Taiwan University to the public.

As well, President Lee welcomes the high school graduates to have the expectation of entering National Taiwan University because NTU is anticipated to be one of the top 50 universities in the world. Meanwhile, he emphasized that National Taiwan University has already established two cross-boundary centers with the support and the permission of National Science Council: one with the Cancer Treatment and Cancer Research, MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States; another one, the research center, with the national science research center in France associated with Marie Curie University and CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in France too. With the new Intel NTU Center which was just set up last year, there have been three world-leveled top research centers operating in National Taiwan University. What’s more to be noted, the national research centers have been developed with the ongoing programs gradually, announcing that National Taiwan University has made itself the top university in the world.

The opening ceremony of the job-recruiting expo was just held on April 11th. The vice CEO of Quanta Computer and the CEO of Etron Technology Inc were also invited to the ceremony for the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival. While giving the speech for the opening ceremony, President Lee hopes and expects NTU graduates to develop and to improved the qualification and the abilities for teamwork, communication and high EQ, in regard of the comments from the corporations over the years. Therefore, National Taiwan University will have to focus on the courses and the education of practical knowledge with more teamwork to guarantee the corporations that NTU graduates will perform the better working abilities to commit to the industries. There were more than 230 companies and corporations joining the job-recruiting event at the NTU campus last weekend, and they provided over 12,000 job offers for both NTU graduates and undergraduates.

On the opening day, the Department of Mechanical Engineering also held the final for the competition of the creative mechanical design, the remote-control transmitters. This competition required the originally designed materials without the purchase of any available products. The competitors had to eject the ping-pong ball to the required location by the operation of the wireless remote control over the obstacles. The whole competition was so creative and full of fun with surprises. The competitors had to designed the complicated ejectors and transmitters in addition to the basic theories of the mechanic engineering. This competition was truly a great challenge for the students’ use of knowledge and creativity. The final winners were as the follows: the gold medal goes to Factory’s Monologue, the silver medal goes to Lah Lah Lah, and the bronze medals go to Terminator, Arduino++, and KOCAO.

There are also the evaluations of the NTU students’ clubs, campus tour, art events, concerts, and drama performances to be held to celebrate the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival. For more information and events of the 2012 NTU Azalea Festival, visit the NTU website: http://www.ntu.edu.tw/activities/azalea2012/