University Social Responsibility
Approaches to Promoting Social Responsibility in Universities
Based on internal support systems and measures, external resource linkage mechanisms, and talent cultivation mechanisms and practices, the University implemented the USR Hub system and moved forward with the “ Site Support Program”. In 2018-2019, the University successfully established local community demonstration sites with the direction of placemaking as the implementation of the USR program. Based on this foundation, in 2020, the University further moved towards cultural creation by developing Coffee for Dreams, establishing the Philippine Learning Commons in Taiwan, and organizing the Taiwan-Japan International Development Community Work Camp. Since 2010, the University has strengthened the strategy of the “ Site Support Program” by continuing to focus on the key projects of a resilient city, a healthy and sustainable environment, local cultural creation, and the USRi.
Systems and Measures to Support USR in NUK
Implement USR Project:
Internal Support System and Measures
1. Adjustment of Teacher Promotion and Evaluation System
Add a new item of points for the implementation of the USR program in the university's “Teacher Promotion Method”, with a maximum of 20 points, in order to encourage the university's teachers to participate in the USR program, and to use the professional knowledge and skills of the university's teachers to link with the local industries and communities, to bring academics into the local area, and to fulfill the university's social responsibility.
Revise the organization and scale of the “Teaching Promotion Seminar”, which is a method of multiple promotion for teachers, and strengthen the mechanism of multiple promotion for teachers who have invested in the USR program, social practice, and social design courses.
2. Expanding Flexible Salary Incentives
Revision of the “National University of Kaohsiung Teachers' Social Service Excellence Award Setting Regulations”: To encourage the faculty members of NUK to devote themselves to social service with their academic expertise, to optimize the mechanism of the awarding system to recognize the efforts and contributions of the faculty members' social participation, and to set up a different learning model.
Revision of the “Regulations for Selection and Flexible Salary Support for Outstanding Teachers of National University of Kaohsiung Implementing the Higher Education Sprout Project and Teaching Quality Enhancement Program”: In order to expand the rewards for teachers' participation in the USR program and social practice courses, NUK incorporated the USR handbook into the “Outstanding Teachers of the Higher Education Deepening Program and Teaching Quality Enhancement Program” (flexible salary) award scope in 2018. In the same year, the University amended the regulations to include “Social Practice and Field Management Talent Cultivation” as one of the award categories, in order to reward teachers whose social practice programs/courses or social design courses were approved by the program in the current year, and who have contributed to the fulfillment of the university's social responsibility. in 2024, a total of two teachers were awarded, one for the long-term support of the teaching camps in remote villages and outlying islands, and the other for the promotion of science education as a core component of the university.
Links to External Resources
1. Inter-university Collaboration and Expanding Collaborative Support Networks:
The University participates in the National University System of Taiwan (NUST), and through inter-university cooperation and integration of teaching, research, social responsibility, internationalization, library, and industry, we deepen the interaction between the university and the industry in the upstream, midstream, and downstream, with the hope that academic research can assist in the upgrading of the industry, and we have combined with the National Chung-Hsing University, the National Taichung University of Education, the National University of Taiwan for Physical Education and Sports, the National Chin-Yi University of Science and Technology, the National Chang-Hua University of Technology, National Jinan International University, National Union University, the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, the National Hu-wei University of Science and Technology, and the University of Chiayi to expand the support network, a total of 11 schools, sharing educational resources, linking the Sprout Project of higher education and the university's social responsibility practice plan, making good use of the existing resources of each school, and specifically presenting the power of the horizontal connection of the university system, giving full play to the characteristics of each school, and fully fulfilling the responsibility of the university to make efforts for the development of the country.
In 2024, the system circle hosted the NUST Interdisciplinary Sustainability: USR Social Practice & ESG Placemaking Forum and USR Achievement Exhibition Bazaar. The Center for General Education's full-time faculty members led Jian-ye Village's partners and our students to participate in the event, and the full-time faculty members and partners served as speakers and displayed the school's USR achievements in the bazaar.
2. Community co-prosperity and spatial revitalization
Through the National Science Council's Placemaking Program and the Jianye Village's resident enterprises, the University is working with the concept of “Jianye Department Store” to reshape the local identity and establish a community learning space. The University is also assisting in working with the Science Park and the Qiaotou Sugar Factory in its surrounding area, and intends to assist in the revitalization of the factory's internal space by linking up with the Welfare Committees of the science and technology factories in the Park and the factories' assistance in providing space, venues, and other resources. Through actual site visits and interactions, we will operate potential USR sites in the future and accumulate energy for local cultural creation.
3. City Co-Prosperity and Community Network for Disaster Prevention and Rescue
NUK has been supporting the Kaohsiung City Government in conducting scientific research on disaster prevention and relief for a long period of time, providing governmental units with research proposals related to windstorms and landslides, assisting in the inventory and construction of a disaster prevention and relief information platform, and strengthening disaster prevention and relief decision-making, analysis, and contingency capabilities, with an estimated annual funding of NT$10 million, and engaging with 18 Kaohsiung private enterprises or manufacturers in disaster prevention through corporate disaster prevention and social responsibility.
Talent Development Mechanism
1.Support Measures for Curriculum Development
(1) Establishment of Micro Curriculum System:
National University of Kaohsiung has revised the “Regulations on the Establishment of Credit Curriculums” to establish a micro-curriculum system to meet the needs of social and industrial development, integrate cross-disciplinary teaching resources on campus, and increase students' diversified learning opportunities. As of the 2024 academic year, a total of 9 groups of micro-programs have been offered by the various faculties and the Center for General Education.
(2) Teaching Enhancement Grant Program
The National University of Kaohsiung “Teaching Improvement Grants” was amended in 2023 to subsidize the innovative teaching of “cross-domain co-teaching”. In order to support teachers to cooperate in the development of community-based courses to promote co-teaching, under the existing regulations, teachers can provide co-teaching hours according to the actual needs of the courses and the actual number of teaching hours, and incorporate them into the Deep-Bowl courses and PBL courses, to support the innovation of the teachers' courses and to bring different cross-domain perspectives to the students. In 2024, there were a total of 25 grant cases.
2.Implementing Community Participatory Curriculum
The Center for General Education of the University has formulated a methodology for classifying fields and topics, which is in line with the promotion of the Social Engagement Curriculum Grant Program. Teachers are encouraged to adjust the curriculum design and carry out pedagogical innovations to extend the learning field from the classroom to the local living circle, and take students out of the classroom to design for the society, so as to develop students' sense of identification with the locality, social care, creativity, and practical skills.
In 2024, there were 16 social engagement courses, including “Service Learning,” “Field Research,” “Labeling Literature and Temple Culture,” “Narrative Power and Business Case Analysis,” “Introduction to Disaster Prevention,” and “Disaster Prevention Skills and Practices,” which were attended by 618 students. Through the professional competence and influence of the instructors, the students were arranged to serve in various public and private organizations, and to participate in the care of the elderly and the young, volunteer services, ecological environment, and educational counseling issues, deepening the relationship between the university and partner organizations, and increasing the energy of our students to carry out the university's social responsibility.
3. Assisting USR Program Courses to be Developed and Incorporated into Academic Programs:
The Center for General Education assists USR faculty in developing USR-related general education courses and incorporating them into the existing Micro-curriculum of General Education according to their course attributes and content so that students are not limited by their majors. For example, in 2024, the Center for General Education's “Sustainable Environment Micro-curriculum” included “Introduction to Disaster Prevention” and “Disaster Prevention Skills and Practical Work” as elective subjects in the USR program “Resilient Communities, Independent Disaster Prevention, and Sustainable Cities Training Program”.
Curriculum of the “Micro-curriculum of General Education on Sustainable Environment
|
Title |
Credit |
Offered by |
Cluster |
|
|
Required (Choose 1) |
Environmental Ethics |
3 |
General Ed Ctr |
Core-ethics |
|
Technology and Engineering Ethics |
3 |
General Ed Ctr |
Core-ethics |
|
|
Elective (Choose 2) |
Environmental Protection |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
Introduction to Nature and Conservation |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
|
Ecology Explained |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
|
Photosynthesis and Carbon Reduction |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
|
Exploring the Earth |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
|
Introduction to Disaster Prevention / Disaster Prevention Skills and Practices |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
|
|
Interdisciplinary Sustainability - Carbon Storage and the Environment |
2 |
General Ed Ctr |
Liberal ed-nature science |
Linking the Program Team to Local Issues
Implementing USR Programs
1.Disaster Prevention and Resilient Cities:
The “Resilient Communities and Sustainable Cities Project” is funded by the Ministry of Education's third phase (2023-2024) of the University Social Responsibility (USR) Program. The project team, led by Prof. Ming-hao Wu of the Center for Disaster Prevention and Rescue Science and Technology Research at the university, continued the goals of the USR Hub Seeds of Resilience Project, and provided long-term support to the Kaohsiung City Government in conducting research and studies on disaster prevention and rescue, analyzing potential areas for various types of disasters, formulating disaster prevention and rescue plans, implementing and integrating resources, assisting communities in independent disaster prevention, and planning for a resilient city. The goal of the project is to support the Kaohsiung City Government in conducting scientific research on disaster prevention and relief, analyzing potential areas for various types of disasters, formulating disaster prevention and relief plans, implementing and integrating resources, counseling the community to prevent disasters on their own, and planning for micro-storage floods (pools). The goal is to improve community disaster prevention and relief energy by integrating community resources through on-site investigations of community environments, and to assist the 18 District Offices in setting up a mechanism for collaboration on disaster prevention and relief in the 18 districts in the fiscal year of 2024.
In order to effectively promote resilient community building and community disaster prevention and relief work, and to continue to cultivate disaster prevention and relief talents, the Program held 6 sessions of 8 classes of the Disaster Prevention Officer Training Course, targeting Kaohsiung City Government bureaus' disaster prevention and relief business contractors, district offices' disaster prevention and relief business contractors, flood control and water protection volunteers, disaster prevention and community volunteers' teams, enterprises, and the general public, and in 2024, a total of 124 of the School's faculty and staff members and students passed the test and obtained the Ministry of the Interior's Disaster Prevention Officer Qualification.
The University developed the “Introduction to Disaster Prevention” and “Disaster Prevention Skills and Practices” courses related to resilient disaster prevention in order to cultivate the spirit of social responsibility among university students, to lead students from different fields to actually participate in several community and district office disaster prevention and rescue drills and autonomous disaster prevention community observation activities, and to co-organize with the Kaohsiung City Government's Bureau of Water Resources the education training and drills of the new type of temporary flood prevention equipment, so that the university students can be involved in the community's disaster prevention affairs in the future, and to carry out community disaster prevention and rescue organization construction to help the community operate as a resilient community. This will enable university students to participate in community disaster prevention affairs in the future, build community disaster prevention and relief organizations, and help the community to become a resilient community.
2. Incubate USR Hub teams
S-Corridor LOHAS University Town:
“S-Corridor LOHAS University City" is a project attended mainly by Department of Kinesiology, Health and Leisure Studies and Department of Athletic Performance. Through ongoing workshops, lectures, and experiential activities, the University translates theories in the classroom into practical actions to assist the public, and meets the community's needs for healthy exercise and cultural recreation in their daily lives. In 2024, the University partnered with Kaohsiung Sun Yat-Sen High School, Kaohsiung Marathon Association, Cui-Ping Community, and the Nan-Zi International Church to hold the “Recreation and Wellness Workshop,” which promotes the quality of recreational living styles. Through these activities, we aim to enrich the quality and quantity of community life and to cultivate the local community's recognition of the university.
Revitalization of Ke-zai-Liao (Oyster Shed) Fishing Village
Over the years, NUK has continued to establish links with the neighboring community of Ke-zai-Liao in terms of services, education, and ageing. In 2024, we organized the “Study in Ke-zai-Liao - Sustainable Local Practice” activity, which led students to the Ke-zai-Liao community for a sustainable local practice trip, opened up the learning horizons of the community for students, and introduced them to the community which is full of cultural deposits and care. Playing with Mathematics”, ‘Bilingual Creative Science Club’, ‘Intelligent Robot Bilingual Club’, and other courses integrating STEAM, bilingual education, popular science education, and hands-on robotics; and cooperated with Shilong Elementary School to organize the ”Balloons are gone? Memory is gone!” In cooperation with Shilong Elementary School, we organized a national English camp on the theme of “Aging Brain”, designing English learning activities suitable for elementary school children, leading them to enter the world of the mentally handicapped, enhancing their understanding and friendly attitude, and learning how to appropriately respond to and apply the program in real life.
Documentary Preservation and Local Curatorship
Kaohsiung City is the city with the largest number of military villages in Taiwan. In response to the dual pressure of military village renovation and urban development in Kaohsiung City, the University led the students to invest in the Jianye Village to compile and systematize the historical site, and to remodel the local identity with the concept of the “Jianye Department Store,” linking and matching stores with main visual design, promotional materials, and joint activities, and to build a local museum through curation. In 2024, 8 consultation meetings on local issues were held to connect local merchants and neighboring schools, 3 local design workshops, 3 local micro-curatorial workshops, and 1 media literacy enrichment workshop were held, as well as 2 “Jianye Hundred Industries” activities in conjunction with introductory courses at the university, with a total of 64 on-campus students and 107 off-campus participants, to show the local charms of Jianyeh Village, and to build a community culture and co-learning space.
Integration of science and education resources, NUK x K12 building the dream hand in hand
The Center for Science Education is committed to basic education in physics, and has been organizing nationwide physics popularization activities for a long time. Combined with the students of “Service Learning” and “Science Communication Club”, the Center participated in 9 holiday science activities and science fairs at 5 major science museums and 10 major science popularization bases under the Ministry of Education in 2024, to ensure that the seed of science is spread to the participating public.
Through the Center for Science Education, the University organizes teacher workshops, joint conferences, and seminars in the field of nature across the country. 13 teacher workshops were held in 2024, including the “Hands-On Physics Teaching Seminar,” “Science Fun for Teachers,” the “R.O.C. Joint Conference on Physics Education,” and the “Theme-Based Inquiry - Acoustics,” with a cumulative total of 802 teacher attendees.
Alumni Connections and Interactions
By inviting alumni to share their career and work experiences, the program is designed to share with students in a way that is close to them and in a less formal manner. It increases the participation of current students, and strengthens the connection between alumni and the university. The survey of graduates' flow was conducted in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. Through telephone interviews, the survey was completed, and the contact between the present students and alumni provided an additional channel of interaction between the current students and the graduates.
Social Connections
The school actively communicates and interacts with local enterprises or communities, and participates in industrial cluster alliances such as the Taiwan Ciaotou Science Park Academia Industry Consortium (TTCSPAIC) and Academia-Industry Consortium for Southern Taiwan Science Park, and serves an important position in these alliances, such as the director and supervisor of TTCSPAIC, and a board member of the Alliance of Green Universities.
The University joined National University System of Taiwan in 2021, and also participated in various programs within the working circle in 2022, such as laboratory exchange and organizing seminars in special fields. In 2018 the University joined Southern Taiwan Global Research & Industry Alliance, as well as Youth Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government, Small and Medium Enterprises Administration of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Taiwan Startup Terrace. It has participated in various programs aiming at promoting the incubation of new innovations, assisting in the transformation of enterprises, and matching the cooperation of industries, in order to fulfill the goals of the university service of industrial and social linkage. The following inter-school and inter-unit cooperation mechanisms have been established over the years:
1.Establish strategic alliances for academic exchanges: Sign academic exchange agreements and strategic alliance contracts with 11 schools including Open University of Kaohsiung, National Sun Yat-Sen University, National Cheng-Kung University, National Defense University, National Quemoy University, Taiwan Shoufu University, Kaohsiung Medical University, I-Shou University, Air Force Academy, National Taitung University, and Military Academy. In addition to the promotion of the domestic exchange system, cooperation agreements such as inter-university double major and inter-university minor were signed to sustain the sharing of learning resources across universities.
2.Joined "National University System of Taiwan ": the University joined National University System of Taiwan in 2021. Since then, it has established an exchange platform with other universities and colleges, and sought multiple connections with them such as teaching, research, and talent cultivation.
3.Joined Global Research & Industry Alliance (former Global Research and Industry Consortium): Since 2017, the University has participated in Global Research and Industry Alliance integrating the R&D capacity of five universities including Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung Medical University, Pingtung University of Science and Technology, and I-shou University, and recruited member companies to integrate cross-university resources and promote industry-academia cooperation and technology transfer.
4.Join Green University Alliance: In order to realize the spirit of green universities, the University has joined the Alliance, which combines the strengths of various universities to share related information and inter-university cooperation, as well as to strive for resources. The President of the University is also the fifth member of the Board of Directors, in order to strengthen the cooperation with the government, the community and corporate resources, and to promote the concept of sustainability of green universities and intercollegiate and internationalization strategies.
5.Consolidating national education and co-learning service programs: In response to the 2019 Curriculum teaching model and students' learning styles, the University formed an "Education Action Alliance" with high schools in Kaohsiung area, integrating resources to help them create diversified elective courses with special characteristics; continued to work with Renwu High School and the Renda Industrial Zone to set up “Petrochemical Industry Renda Specialized Class", assisting in the planning and development of special practicum; and promoted National Education Practice Program in remote areas, and thus to consolidate national education and the spirit of co-learning.