TING, PEI-YUAN
Department of Business Administration
Teacher Ting, Pei-Yuan is now serving in CYCU Department of Business Administration as an assistant professor, who have worked with multiple professors from the Department of Business Management, Department of Commercial Design, and Department of Electronic Engineering, Department of Commercial Design, and Department of Electronic Engineering to organize the service learning courses for more than one decade. The service learning courses integrate theories and practical experience and lead students to do what they are good at to help the disadvantaged groups, and also provide the environment for “learning by doing” to urge the students to learn voluntarily.
Teacher Ting works hard to negotiate and cooperate with NPO outside the school, in hopes of soliciting for organizations and entities to receive the services about advertisements and planning provided by the students, so that more people may see the disadvantaged groups and extend support to them. By digging out problems, analyzing problems and solving problems, the students have the chance to work with different experts and communicate with each other in a professional manner to create their own work together and spread the same to the public.
The famous works created by the students and boosted by Teacher Ting include “Release Hen Chicken” and “Dead Alive if You Have No Dream”. The students make every endeavor to create all of the works and devote themselves to the society. How touched Teacher Ting is would be more than words.
Keep Philosophy and Embrace Dream!
Organization of such courses is really a tough work. Each teacher has to be ready for fighting at any time, as if they were wearing helmet and bullet-proof vest. Inevitably, some student might act emotional or keep complaining when he is growing. Teachers have to stay with the student to get through it. Sometimes, teachers would feel depressed and sleepless as they are worrying about the student. What should be grateful is CYCU teachers’ hardworking in leading students with enthusiasm to complete the courses in order to enable the students to grow, avoid wasting their university life, and train their competitiveness for working in the society.
Notwithstanding, we should feel satisfied when seeing the students present their work to, and share their philosophy with, the journalists or visitors at the press conference so happily at the end of semester or presentation of results. What we feel proud is that the students are no longer afraid to speak out their dream and are brave to state their thoughts before the camera. Moreover, some seniors would return to the school to give the juniors some instruction voluntarily to help the courses. Therefore, all of the students have experienced what “it’s more blessed to give than to receive” means.
As long as you specify service learning on the resume, you may find a job successfully after graduation!
When a lot of students who participated in the service learning asked me to write the recommendation letter after their graduation, I saw that their experience in service learning shared a lot of portion of their resume stating their growth and how they teamed up with their groups, planned and led projects. Such experience might interest their job interviewers. At least, the interviewers will consider that the students didn’t waste their life when they were studying in university. One of my students, who worked so hard and spared no efforts to participate in the courses, were eventually hired by a large-scale advertising agency after she completed the service learning courses. Apparently, even if such courses seem difficult, they are the key to urge students to make progress remarkably and upgrade their competitiveness in the society. As long as the students complete the courses, basically they are able to assume personal responsibility and hold the position as supervisor.
CHOU, RUNG-JIUN
Department of Landscape Architecture
Since 2011, Teacher Chou, Jung-Chun has worked with multiple professors of the Department of Landscape Architecture to engage in the “Big Tree Classroom” service learning plan and lead the students of the Department to help improve the space in campus, in hopes of extending the teaching to outdoors through the service learning activities and binding the courses with the mother nature and humanistic environment closely.
The “Big Tree Classroom” refers to a long-term education plan combining the profession in landscape architecture and service learning. The students of the Department of Landscape Architecture and local users all participated in the space renovation process. For teachers and students, it is considered as a very big challenge. The “Big Tree Classroom” plan skipped the traditional classroom instruction but enabled the university students to practice, operate and learn based on the existing professional knowledge, skill and experience owned by them in the form of relocation education, so that the students could get knowledge and inspiration from the physical experience and achieved the purpose of “learning by doing and doing by learning”.
Teacher Chou has worked with multiple professors of CYCU to boost the service learning cooperation plan of Ministry of Education in the recent years, in hopes of inspiring the new orientation combining the profession in landscape architecture and service learning with more abundant energy and resources.
CHIEN, CHIH-FENG
Graduate School of Education
Teacher Chien has engaged in the service learning since he executed the online tutoring service plan of Ministry of Education. Teacher Chien found that a lot of data was worth researching. Notwithstanding, as a new teacher had no resources, he could not help but tried his best to find the topic of research. Then, Teacher Liao, Ching-Jung invited her to act as the co-investigator of the online tutoring service plan, and they started to organize the service learning courses and promoted the online tutoring service plan to preschools, contacted the children different from those from the ordinary family, found the gap in learning and need for tutoring, and realized that the technology could help the children in their schooling and tutor their spirit and mind.
It is not easy to organize the service learning courses, as it is necessary to prepare the formal courses, integrate learning service and have students participate in service. The students who have no idea about what service learning means often mistake that the service learning courses make students provide services by paying credit fees. Therefore, when Teacher Chien taught the courses at the very beginning, the teaching evaluation scores were so terrible. Then, he realized that he had to teach students about the meaning of service learning and importance of motive at the beginning to enable the students to feel that the real value of university resided in their own accomplishment and also fulfillment of the social responsibility and care, as the service did not mean one’s contribution only. In fact, the students may receive more from the interpersonal communication, self-expression, judgment and thinking, solution of problems and empathy, so as to make themselves complete, make others complete and receive the real experience in holistic education. Apparently, such experience is much better than what they learn from classroom or books only.
The reward gained by Teacher Chien therefor refers to the transformation of his research into integration of the Graduate School of Education and Institute of Service Science, and evaluation on the effect and result of service learning courses through research to urge the improvement on courses and services and fulfill the combination of theories and practices.
