【Article by Office of International Cooperation】
NCCU’s Office of International Cooperation is pleased to announce the signing of a sister school agreements with the University of Virginia(UVA). Founded by Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, in 1819, the University of Virginia is a highly regarded research university and is ranked among the best public universities in the United States, on par with the University of California, Berkeley.

Following the inauguration of NCCU President Kuo Ming-cheng in November 2018, the two universities have been striving to establish the university-level partnership via numerous active contacts. Over the past 3 years, Prof. Harry Harding, Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA and Yushan Scholar at NCCU, and his wife Prof. Shirley Lin, have been a great and constant support behind the partnership. Prof. Lin is a Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at UVA.

The two universities completed the signing of the memorandum of cooperation and student exchange in May this year, following negotiations that extended over the terms of three NCCU vice-presidents for international cooperation. In the future undergraduate and postgraduate students can participate in exchanges between the two universities.

In addition, NCCU’s Master’s and Doctor’s program in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language has been selected to participate in the Taiwan Huayu BEST project MoE, and received the highest subsidy available from the MoE. With this project, more UVA students will be funded to study Chinese at NCCU campus through this scholarship and NCCU will be able to send her Chinese teachers to UVA to conduct training and teaching.

NCCU’s International Master’s in Asia Pacific Studies program (IMAS) and the newly established International College of Innovation (ICI) are also exploring other cooperation with UVA in terms of short term courses and other projects.

The partnership is attained through concerted efforts by the office and departments of NCCU aiming to create greater opportunities for more in-depth cooperation between UVA and NCCU.