NUK Sustainability Report

National University of Kaohsiung, founded in 2000, is the only newly set-up national comprehensive university in Taiwan at the very beginning of the twenty-first century with the mission to balance the development of higher education in southern and northern Taiwan.

 After taking office as president in 2024, I immediately led the senior management team in holding a consensus camp, focusing on four development strategies: "cross-domain innovation," "industry linkage," "local practice," and "international integration." The seven main axes are "encouraging diverse teaching and creating an innovative learning environment," "integrating research energy and strengthening the reward mechanism," "effectively managing space and improving the quality of the campus environment," "implementing administrative innovation and achieving financial sustainability," "sharing resources and fulfilling social responsibility," "establishing a low-carbon smart campus and an ESG operating center," and "driving international linkage and maximizing influence." These strategies aim to improve the governance of school affairs.

Looking back on this year, teachers and colleagues have taken “SDGs x USR x ESG” as the core action, actively participated in international assessments, and continued to publish sustainability reports to ensure that the results of sustainable development are transparent and effectively managed. In the future, the University will continue to strengthen links with USR partner schools, actively participate in the Low Carbon Industry Sustainability Alliance, and discuss key collaborative projects with technology companies to fulfill our role as an ESG platform for the S-shaped technology corridor, as well as collaborate with local governments and cross-boundary governance programs.

The University's sustainable academic research and innovations have also attracted attention, such as the Department of Arts and Creative Design's collaboration with the North, Central, and South national educational partners to create a digital co-learning environment for innovative XR applications, the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering's high-value application of discarded eggshells, and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering's development of a real-time sign language recognition system, “Voice of Sign Language,” for the benefit of the hearing-impaired. The University also actively implements its social responsibility by going into the community to promote science education and caring actions. It has gone to the local communities many times to organize science camps for Taoyuan Elementary School children from a young age, and cultivate scientific talents among the indigenous people. It has also assisted Zuoying Senior High School, Nanzih Senior High School, Zhongzheng Industrial Senior High School, and Ke-liao Junior High School to promote hand-on science education in many local secondary schools. The dedication of its faculty members and students not only demonstrates the University’s commitment to education, but also the its deep concern for the community.

On June 5, 2004, the University signed the International Green University “The Talloires Declaration” and was the first green university in Taiwan to sign the declaration. In the 2024 UI GreenMetric World University Rankings, the University has jumped from 285th to 278th out of a total of 1,477 universities in 84 countries worldwide, ranked in the top 1/5. In 2019, the university was awarded the National Sustainable Development Award in the Education category by the Executive Yuan, and from 2019 to 2024, it received a total of 3 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze awards from the TCSA Corporate Sustainability Report Award in the University category. These awards show that NUK has continued to improve its sustainability performance and has been recognized by the community for its efforts to realize USR (University Social Responsibility) and to promote SDGs and local prosperity and co-prosperity.

The University will continue to pursue the vision of “a distinctive university with international reputation” and the positioning of “a distinctive quality university that integrates teaching and research with industrial development, emphasizes humanistic qualities and technological innovation, and nurtures elite talents”. Internally, we have established the local interpretation of SDGs as the core DNA of the University, and externally, we are promoting the strategy of joint interpretation of SDGs with international partners to make “SDGs-Inside” the language of the University to connect with the international community, to become a learning model for Southeast Asian universities to connect with European and American universities, to create international connections, and to develop the key carrier of the university with special characteristics.

We firmly believe that the spirit of sustainable development lies in “practice” rather than “ duplication”, and that practice is the key to the success of a sustainable campus. The efforts of the University are constantly proving that “Sustainable Taiwan” is a future that can be realized. Thanks to the dedication of our staff, students, and community partners, we are able to make the University's sustainability actions in 2024 fruitful, and we need to move forward to create a sustainable future together.