Da Hsuan Feng
Senior Executive Vice President
Alumni and alma mater are like children and parents. They are forever joined emotionally by an invisible but very real umbilical cord!.
On a warm, sunny and inviting afternoon of February 16, 2008 in Tainan , I saw up-front this profound emotion from one of our 120,000 alumni. He is Dr. Ken Chong, 張建平, Class of 1964 in NCKU’s very demanding structural engineering program. Dr. Chong is currently an Engineering Advisor and Program Director of Mechanics & Structures of Materials Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation of United States and is also a world renowned scientist/technologist. In 2003, in recognition of his profound intellectual contributions, Dr. Chong received the accolade from NCKU as a “distinguished alumnus”.
Dr. Chong came to Tainan this time as the chief representative from NSF in the NSF-NSC Workshop on Simulation-Based Engineering and Science for Emerging and Transforming Technology, which will be held on campus on February 18-21. The workshop was the brainchild of Dr. Chong and it was his first visit to his alma mater since 2003. Not surprisingly, one of the first requests he made was to have a tour of campus.
Throughout the afternoon, Tommy Tzeng (Vice President for Research and Development), Tzeng’s wife and I accompanied Dr. Chong around our enormous campus. Somehow, unlike riding the bicycle around campus, which is my usual mode of transportation, walking around campus makes one sense its enormity!
We began our tour by having coffee at the tranquil Chi-Mei Coffee Shop, which is on first floor of Chi-Mei Building , a structure donated by Chi-Mei electronics as an annex to the already “humongous” electrical engineering building. The setting was so very relax and therefore Tommy and I took to opportunity to pump Dr. Chong’s enormous wisdom and experience in science and technology management. It was absolutely obvious that his years of working in one of the world’s most successful funding agencies, the National Science Foundation, has allowed him to develop an extremely sharp and comprehensive mind in this business. Coupled this with his already brilliant mind, it is a combination that is hard to beat! The fact that Dr. Chong is a alumnus is indeed LUCKY for NCKU!
After our leisure coffee hour, we went to the University Museum , which happened to be just across the street from the coffee shop. While we were all impressed with the displays, it was abundantly clear, however, that what captured the heart of Dr. Chong was the “University History” room. There, I could sense his mind went on a “time machine” and returned to his days when he was still a student at NCKU. He told me that one of his proudest moments as a senior at NCKU was being elected as class president, which he said was because he was one of the best, if not the best students, of his class. The Museum building was the administration building forty years ago, and as a class president, Dr. Chong spent much time in the building talking to the President of the University at the time.
After the Museum, our original intention was to show Dr. Chong the new library. However, Dr. Chong clearly had something else he wanted to visit. That was the old library, which is also adjacent to the Museum and is now a building where students used it as study halls. As soon as we walked in, I could tell that he was reminiscing his days in NCKU when he had to spend endless hours studying, or was it pursuing his future wife, or both, in that building. That gave “mixing business with pleasure” a new meaning indeed. For whatever reason or reasons, I realized that there was NO WAY we could pull him away from that old building! Indeed, once we were inside the building, I could almost see Dr. Chong’s mind time-traveled back 40 years and be mesmerized by every table and chair he could laid his eyes on!
Dr. Chong also told me that nearly all the courses and textbooks NCKU used during his days were provided by Purdue University, which once again affirmed what I heard previously from other alumni, such as Harold Szu, a program director at the Office of Naval Research and Paul Chu, now president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
After taking pictures underneath the old University Gate, and had a grand tour of the new library, where Dr. Chong also checked out the Workshop venue, we walked to the icon of the university, the Banyan Park . While we all marveled about the beauty of one of world’s oldest banyan tree, I also learned from Dr. Chong that this area of the university belonged to a military camp then, hence no outsiders could come to visit during his days.
In summary, I was indeed grateful that I had the opportunity to accompany Dr. Chong on this tour of NCKU’s campus. It gave me on the one hand a deeper understanding of the profound relationship between alumni and NCKU and on the other a historical lesson of the growth of this remarkable university in Asia Pacific!
I cannot think of anything else I wanted to do more than to have the opportunity to walk around campus with Dr. Chong on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon!.
(714)788-1767 免費 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
