This year’s Taiwan-US International Education Administrators (IEA) Roundtable Networking took place in Taipei yesterday, held jointly by the Foundation for International Cooperation in High Education of Taiwan (FICHET) and the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange.
Nearly 70 representatives from 40 Taiwanese and 16 American universities attended, seeking to deepen higher-education ties between both countries and promote further collaboration.
Lee Yu-jiuan (李毓娟), director general of the Ministry of Education’s Department of International and Cross-strait Education, said that over the decades, there have been more than 2,000 exchanges between Taiwanese and US higher-education institutions.
Photo coutersy of the Foundation for International Cooperation in High Education of Taiwan
More than 20,000 Taiwanese study in the US, while 4,000 Americans study in Taiwan, she said.
The 2020 US-Taiwan Education Initiative fostered new collaborations in language education, and more than 60 percent of American students in Taiwan are in Mandarin language programs, she added.
The Ministry of Education contributed by sending 70 Mandarin teachers and teaching assistants to the US last year, she added.
The US is an important partner for Taiwan’s higher education, FICHET chairperson Wu Cheng-chih (吳正己) said.
The US-Taiwan Education Initiative has broadened exchanges among academics and students, enhanced science, technology, engineering and mathematics collaboration, and expanded support for language programs, Wu said.
These efforts have already yielded results, he added.
The Foundation for Scholarly Exchange, also known as Fulbright Taiwan, has been a key part of efforts to encourage US education delegations to Taiwan and promote people-to-people exchanges, he said.
Fulbright Taiwan promotes bilateral engagement through various initiatives, such as its internship program, which supports Taiwanese students and academics studying in the US, Fulbright Taiwan Executive Director Randall Nadeau said.
The foundation also organizes lectures, events related to Taiwan-US ties, short-term programs and bilateral visits, he said.
First Education Secretary Canny Yi-Ken Liao (廖苡?) from the Ministry of Education’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Education, spoke about the status of educational cooperation initiatives.
From the US, Anize Appel, dean of the Center for Global Education at Pennsylvania’s Moravian University, and Christina Kinney, director of International Education and Global Engagement at Pennsylvania’s Kutztown University, talked about their own experiences and perspectives of international collaborations and the distinctive qualities of US higher education.
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