NPUST and RongHua Elementary Jointly Promote University Social Responsibility

In recent years, teachers and students of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) have been devoted to the practice of University Social Responsibility (USR). One of the school’s latest University Social Responsibility projects to receive sponsorship from the Ministry of Education is dedicated to “Revitalizing and Optimizing the Makatao Healthy Agricultural Industry”. Under this project, which was implemented by NPUST’s Vice President for Administration, Wen-Ling Shih, a team of teachers from NPUST has been holding a variety of courses at RongHua Elementary School (Pingtung County), covering technological agriculture, food & agriculture science, Makatao history, and Hakka rice cuisine. Field trips to NPUST’s Smart Farm and 3D printing center have also been arranged to give the participants from RongHua an opportunity to put the knowledge they learn in the classroom to practice.

In order to recognize the successful USR-based partnership that the two parties share, and announce their common intention to promote social responsibility strategies, on December 21 (2024), a ceremony was held at RongHua Elementary School to unveil a new commemorative plaque. NPUST’s Vice President of Administration Wen-Ling Shi attended the event, during which they also officially fired-up the school’s new earthen kiln, which was created according to concepts of sustainable development to help demonstrate the important achievements of food & agriculture science and environmental education.

Vice-President Wen-Ling Shih said, “in the future we will use low-carbon food materials and biomass pellets made from branches pruned from the university’s fruit-trees to reinterpret agricultural by-products and create environmentally friendly delicacies with flavors of the different fruit trees. Education and talent cultivation is a long-term undertaking—it doesn’t matter if it is university or primary school, principals or teachers, with the end goal in mind, only by providing good education can we turn society into a better place”.