NTU President Pan-Chyr Yang gave a keynote address on “Cutting Edge Research in NTU” at the Tsinghua University campus for the AEARU-LERU Presidents Meeting and AEARU-AGM 19th Annual General Meeting. Besides sharing about NTU’s innovation and international collaboration experiences, he also discussed how to develop a sense of social responsibility in students. Dr. Yang also introduced the Worldwide Online Mandarin Courses and Innovation Incubator Entrepreneurship Plan. During the meeting, President Yang also moderated a forum featuring Osaka University, Tohoku University, Kyoto University and Beijing University, as well as extending invitations to participate in and reporting on the “Energy and Environment Workshop” to be hosted by NTU in October 2014. AEARU was founded in 1996 as a pan-Asian international research promotion organization, with a mission to enhance exchange among the cutting edge Asian research universities, helping stimulate higher education in the region and nurturing advanced research and development along with cultural, economic and social progress. AEARU annually hosts a number of professional conferences and student exchange events. AEARU membership spans Asia (China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan), with 17 research universities participating in this important association. The AEARU mission statement emphasizes promoting academic cooperation and exchange among members, thereby enhancing higher education and research, along with establishing a platform for sharing research results. This year, AEARU hosted its first joint annual meeting in conjunction with the League of European Research Universities (LERU). Presidents and Vice Presidents of LERU members including the University of Munich, Heidelberg University, University of Barcelona, Imperial College London, University of London College, Lund University (Sweden), University of Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris VI) were also in attendance for the meeting. During the meeting, universities not only introduced their innovative higher education policies, taking into account the trend for globalization, revealing how each university intends to harness the opportunities posed, and rely on cooperation to enhance higher education research and development, while also considering new educational policies and discussing the development and challenges of higher education during globalization.

At this meeting, President Pan-Chyr Yang introduced NTU’s Cutting Edge Research, noting how the university had awarded its first Social Contribution Award to Hsin-Ling Shen, revealing the emphasis NTU places on nurturing not only academically outstanding students with excellent research and classroom performance, but also able to engage in contributing back to society and displaying a spirit of aiding others.

Pres. Yang also explained the NTU involvement with Coursera since 2013, working with Stanford, Yale and 75 other leading universities, to provide free MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). NTU is offering popular courses such as Probability, Chinese Historical Personages- Qin Shi Huang, as well Chinese literature classes on the Dream of the Red Chamber or Book of History, helping promote global recognition for Chinese traditional culture.

During the question and answer period, many Presidents and Vice Presidents expressed great interest in Pres. Yang’s introduction to the NTU online Chinese culture classes, and their amazement at the combination of online games and learning possible through the PAGAMO Online system. Pres. Yang’s speech stimulated a lively discussion of the tremendous potential that online courses hold for the future.