National Sun Yat-sen University was established in 1980 and is located alongside the Hsitzu Bay, Kaohsiung city. The University has become an important research university in Southern Taiwan. Presently, it consists of six colleges: College of Liberal Arts, College of Science, College of Engineering, College of Management, College of Marine Sciences, and College of Social Sciences, totally eighteen departments offering thirty-five Master's and twenty-six Doctoral programs. According to data as of July 2008, there are approximately 9,124 students enrolled, including 3,900 Master's degree students and 1,200 Doctoral students. The University employs 454 full-time faculty members, including 224 full professors, 121 associate professors, 92 assistant professors, and 17 lecturers. The number of faculty members holding the title of assistant professor or higher is 437, accounting for 96% of all full-time faculty. The percentage of assistant professors who hold doctoral degrees is 99.54%.

In terms of research papers published in scientific journals listed in SCIE, SSCI and AHCI indexes, the university has accrued a total of 738 as of 2007. On average, every faculty member with the title of assistant professor or higher has published 1.69 papers. This reveals that researches at National Sun Yat-sen University have established a solid foundation and potential for growth. In the past few years, we have received three grants from the Ministry of Education’s Academic Improvement Project and National Cheng Kung University and National Sun Yat-sen University Cross-University Integration Project in which we demonstrated superior performance.

The National Sun Yat-sen University has been prolific in producing academic research in related fields offered at the university. It has therefore been categorized by the Ministry of Education as one of the seven research universities in the country. NSYSU places special emphasis on providing a general education that balances humanities with sciences. In the 2004 Ministry of Education's evaluation of General Education among the seven research universities, NSYSU received the assessment of “being the most ambitious, having made significant improvements” and most importantly, being rated most competitive. In terms of student affairs, NSYSU makes full use of its diverse ecological resources and its enchanting natural environment in order to nurture students to be “kind, energetic and creative,” and aims to develop a continuously innovative campus culture that cares about humanities, loves life, fills with energy, and brings creativity. In the 2005 university affairs evaluation, the NSYSU was recognized as exhibiting superior performance in both general education and student affairs among the ten national integrated universities in the country.

National Sun Yat-sen University has significantly raised its administrative efficiency in the past three years through streamlining human resources, developing mentoring structures, and promoting complete computerization of administration, this has greatly contributed to the creation and development of a solid teaching and research environment. Even though NSYSU is a relatively young university, faculty and students work collaboratively toward building an environment conducive to the pursuit of academic excellence. Despite its encouraging beginning, there is still room for improvement for NSYSU to become a first-class international university.

One of the problems which NSYSU is facing currently is the result of government's long-term investment in construction emphasizing the North over South. Being located in the South, NSYSU has more difficulty in attracting talented individuals, international scholars and research personnel generally do not favor working in Southern Taiwan which results in difficulties in the retention of highly qualified personnel. In addition, funding limitations prevent the possibility of acquiring large equipments, increasing space and strengthening basic infrastructure for teaching and research. Funding for this project will attempt to resolve the problems mentioned above seeks to solve.

Through the execution of “Aim for the Top University Plan,” NSYSU hopes to become a “unique first-class international university” in the next five years. We are working towards becoming an internationalized, computerized, and efficient university as well as a top-caliber research university with superior research capabilities in specific disciplines. Before the year of 2017, we have the vision of being among the top 200 universities in the world. This project's implementation plan includes strengthening the basic infrastructure, achieving outstanding research, offering superior teaching, and cultivating talented individuals.

1.

implementing computerization of campus

Addition of a broad-band network system, a new generation of computerized E-learning environment, an expanded Internet system to connect to the world and a secure integrated data management center.

2.

Creating an automatic electronic library

Addition of digital resources to existing reserves, strength digital learning, develop a new computerized management system and a comprehensive digital service environment.

3.

Establishing the Sun Yat-sen International Village

Reassessment of campus space to provide housing for short-term research scholars in cooperation with construction of new buildings and facilities to create an international village, which not only provide international exchange students and short-term research scholars with a convenient and comfortable living environment. In addition, the international village would provide housing and research facilities for international research scholars involved in NSYSU's prioritized and specialized research programs. Through strengthening infrastructure, NSYSU can provide a solid foundation to achieve groundbreaking research, inform teaching practice and provide foundation for cultivating future talent.

1.

Enhancing research performances

NSYSU continues to encourage publication in international journals, to implement the Sun Yat-sen and the Hsitzuwan Chair Professors, to attract research professors, to employ distinguished assistant professors, to reward full-time professors with Outstanding Research Award, Outstanding Young Scholar Award, and Sun Yat-sen Invention Award in academic and applied research excellence. To efficiently utilize academic resources and enhance the performances of research activities, NSYSU has established subsidy guidelines for academic research programs and equipment, integration of the joint and high-value instrument resources, promotion of patents application, technology transfer, and set-up guild lines for remaining grants from research projects.

2.

Developing prioritized and specialized research disciplines

NSYSU continues to elevate the level of local academic research and interaction of international exchanges. On the one hand, promotion of establishment of research centers that focus on internationally-competitive specialized disciplines including photonic crystal technology, marine science and nanotechnology. Through cooperating with research centers in first-class universities around the world and to restructure in universities within the country to reach top international standard. On the other hand, NSYSU actively promotes the development of specialized and nationally-competitive research disciplines with an eye towards becoming a first-class internationally specialized research center. In future development plans, NSYSU will continue in promoting the development of other research areas on campus to increase the overall research standard.

1.

Retaining talented faculty

NSYSU aims to improve the structure of our faculty to further enhance the quality of our human resources. By recruiting visiting scholars, distinguished researchers, professors who excel in teaching and talented new hires to strengthen our human resource foundation.

2.

Improving teaching results

NSYSU established a teaching resource and development center to raise our faculty’s teaching ability and to increase the University’s overall teaching quality. We will also raise the quality of general education by creating specialized disciplines, increasing internationalization and promoting e-learning. We will continue to reward excellence in performance by establishing a Teaching Excellence Award, organizing conferences, and creating multimedia production classrooms to help instructors create digital materials. In view of the future demand for personnel with expertise across disciplines, we will also encourage interdisciplinary programs across colleges to increase students’ learning motivation. We will also integrate research in key and specialized disciplines into the curricular of these interdisciplinary programs to raise their teaching quality. This in turn will increase the overall teaching level in the entire University.

1.

To cultivate leaders in all disciplines for the country

(1)

We will raise the quality of general education and develop specific courses in the areas of arts, humanities and social sciences to increase the students’ level of competence. We will likewise build a solid foundation to help them acquire academic skills and supplement it with co-curricular activities that would ensure the development of their individual potentials into its wholeness.

(2)

Establishing a platform for student-led community service to strengthen the effects of student organizations. (At present, the University has 60 student organizations. In 2004, the Wind Instruments Association received the Exceptional Performance Award for entertainment-oriented associations from the Ministry of Education in its national student association evaluation. The Forever Young Association received the Superior Performance Award in the service-oriented association category.) We encourage student associations to invite leaders from different disciplines to speak on campus and to organize international academic conferences as well as athletic events and club functions. We especially encourage sport and activities related to the mountains and the sea. (In 2002, the University received the national college and university highest award in athletics from the Ministry of Education.)

(3)

Strengthening the role of advisors who will counsel students with wholesome characters, global viewpoints, sense of justice and caring for our homeland.

(4)

To encourage the students to be self-determination, self-discipline and self-managing, a Dormitory Governing Committee has been established to implement the democratization on campus.

2.

Cultivating NSYSU's research talent

(1)

In compliance with the Ministry of Education's Study Abroad for Exceptional Students Project, we provide exchange students with scholarships.

(2)

We will increase the number of doctoral scholarships to attract talented doctoral students.

(3)

We will retain talented technical personnel to assist instructors in conducting research.

(4)

We will attract post-doctoral fellows and compulsory military service talents to conduct research at NSYSU.

(5)

In 2005, Sun Yat-sen University established the “3233” Talent Cultivation Project. Through the 5-year program combining bachelor's and master's degree coursework, we hope to develop a better long-term professional formation program to encourage talented students to stay at the University and to contribute their skills and develop their roots here.

3.

Increasing recruitment of undergraduate students

In keeping with our country's economic development needs and the overall development of the school, NSYSU increased the number of admitted classes and cross-college curricular programs to admit a larger number of undergraduate students. We expect to increase 300 students within 5 years, and an average increase of 60 students every year.

4.

Implement the recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds

To achieve the goal of recruiting from diverse backgrounds, a team dedicated to recruiting students from vocational technical fields has been created in the Office of Academic Affairs. This group is responsible for holding entrance examinations for undergraduate, master's and doctoral students, holding transfer exams, recruiting students with exceptional athletic abilities, recruiting students with disabilities, recruiting and rewarding exceptional foreign students and overseas Chinese students as well as recruiting working students and students for the special industry-research master's program. In admission selection, the University will place emphasis on retaining winners of different competitions and students who perform exceptionally well to accomplish our goal of recruiting a variety of talents.

In this project, National Sun Yat-Sen University received eighteen hundred million NT dollars in the previous three years. These funds will be used to strengthen infrastructures (16%), conduct outstanding research (51%), offer superior teaching (20%) and cultivate talented individuals (13%). Key points in the implementation are explained in detail in the Project Guidelines.