Dear guests, NTU graduates, teachers and students,

We are here to celebrate National Taiwan University’s 84th anniversary, a special day with the significant meaning in the NTU history that we have been looking forward to. As for me, it is remarkably worth celebrating the anniversary this time, since it has been two years during my president years in NTU. And this is my last time hosting the anniversary ceremony for NTU. Over the past seven years and a half, National Taiwan University has been keeping up with the vision of “balancing the development, breaking through the subjects, and expanding the international academic exchange” with the full support from the Aim for the Top University Project of the Ministry of Education. We have been doing well by presenting excellent performances from the NTU faculty and students: The quality of doing researches has been improved immensely as well as the teaching quality, including the courses of general education, common courses, basic science, social science, service, leadership and creative education. Also, the consultant services for students have been improved too. In addition to that, there have been good presentations and performances from the corporation between university and industries, the transfer of techniques and the new ventured industries. Our academic prestige has also been elevated a lot around the whole world.

The top universities in the world are supposed to be equipped with those requirements: the top faculty and students, rich resources for the development of the complete and balanced subjects and professional areas, the top prestige of education and academic researches, the academic and professional analysis with the strategy for the important social issues. National Taiwan University takes three steps on the way towards the world top university. First, we proposed our visions with the concrete strategies. Next, we create the campus atmosphere base on our visions. And then, we can provide the sufficient resources to develop creativity. Since 2008, National Taiwan University has already proposed the vision of “Proceeding to the top 100 university in the world for the 80^th NTU anniversary” when it was the year to celebrate and to prepare for the 80^th anniversary ceremony with the first Aim for the Top University Project under the support of the Ministry of Education. And we accomplished the vision in a really short time by making it to the top 100 university in the world. Therefore, we anticipate more by proposing the next vision of “Proceeding to the top 50 university in the world” along with the second Aim for the Top University Project last year in hopes that National Taiwan University will be able to make it by the 90^th anniversary. Moreover, I’d like to make a wish that there will be a Nobel Prize winner from National Taiwan University by the 100th anniversary. I suggest a crucial strategy by changing the academic atmosphere at campus if we expect to make it. Furthermore, all the NTU faculty and students must adjust our minds from being a follower saying “me too” to the pioneer saying “follow me”. This adjustment strategy means a lot to the elevation of visions and scales. There is one innovative way to achieve our goal by having organization work with organization to connect the teamwork with the world top companies and research institutes. As well, we will have to prompt more research teams with more visionary and innovative research projects by means of the pioneering plan. There have already been three research centers in National Taiwan University, and all of them have the world top prestige by having presented excellent research results. There will be two more research centers established next year. These international research centers provide highly developed technology to guide and to lead us to the future. National Taiwan University has of course been having a lot of benefits from these centers by elevating our international prestige and improving the academic atmosphere at NTU campus.

Being a world top university means the responsibility of providing academic analysis and strategy to solve the social issues in the human civilization as well as the cultivation of elite students. Hence, National Taiwan University has already established Center for Public Policy and Law in order to enhance the influence of academia to be able to solve the issues of maintaining the sustainability in the social development. The social issues include the cross-boundary authority, the cross-media law and the establishment of the examination system, the national health insurance with the third version, the damage and disaster prevention and precaution arose by the global climate change, the multi-level governments, the policy for the old-aged society with the plan for the long-distance health care. Thus, National Taiwan University encourages our teachers to get involved in these social issues by having already planned the academic evaluation in advance for the policy research on the social problems by means of the academic profession and the practice.

It is certainly the age of knowledge explosion in the 21st century. Universities have become where the knowledge goes. Therefore, we are obliged to do some contributions to the new industries. We anticipate a future that National Taiwan University will be able to prompt a corporation just like Google or Facebook, which were originated from Stanford University and Harvard University, before the 100^th NTU anniversary. A creative center has already been founded by the research and development department at NTU campus in hopes that we can connect with our NTU alumni’s new corporations among industries to do something to contribute to our society. We certainly need more resources to support our grand visions. Hereby I suggest our government to promote the third Aim for the Top University Project as long as we can maintain the sustainability of the national development so that we can strike a balance to have the both in our nation to improve the academic ability from the top university right after the completion of second Aim for the Top University Project. With the establishment of the creative center at NTU campus, we expect a better future that we will be able to cultivate and to develop more and more greater knowledge, techniques and elites so that they can solve the important social issues for the human civilization nowadays.

Today at the anniversary ceremony, National Taiwan University grants the honorary doctorate to Professor Shui-Long Ma and the Outstanding Alumni to the eight gentlemen below: Professor Yung-Yi Tseng, Professor David Der-Wei Wang, Professor Louise Chou, Professor De-Maw Chuang, Mr. Chee-Chun Leung, Dr. Hung-Min Hung, Professor Yueh-Shen Weng, Professor Qin-Tai Shi. We express our highest appreciation to honor the contribution that Professor Shui-Long Ma has made in the field of music composition and art education by promoting the music education and composition among societies and schools in his life-long career. Also, we are proud of the outstanding NTU alumni for what they have achieved in different areas of academia, industries and businesses, social services, and national development. What they have already done inspired us a lot, and we hereby are thankful for having such great role models because they fully represent the core value of National Taiwan University by doing the best of what they can do to the society.

At this moment of celebrating the 84^th anniversary, I propose the vision for National Taiwan University to proceed to the 100th anniversary. And I sincerely hope that the followers can make it with the efforts. I wish National Taiwan University a happy birthday! And I wish you a healthy and successful life, all the guests, teachers and students. Thank you all.