At the 2022 Global Views University Social Responsibility Awards, a new category for “Comprehensive Performance” was added to the mix—and right out of the gates, NPUST was named “Top Technical and Vocational School” in the category. Meanwhile, the university’s “Golden Waves of Rice Reconcile with the Land” project won the “Model Award” in the Ecological Common Good category.
Global Views Magazine held an awards ceremony on April 13th, and invited representatives from the winning universities, including NPUST’s President Chang-Hsien Tai, NCKU’s President Huey-Jen Su and Tunghai University’s President Kuo-En Chang, to hold talks.
NPUST President Tai shared on the special features and objectives of the university’s agricultural development, environment and society building, and talent cultivation. He also shared his hopes that through the promotion of University Social Responsibility, NPUST will be able to inspire teachers, students and the general public –and that it will even spreads upward to government agencies—to create greater harmony between the goals we set for production, ecology, life and sustainable development.
When receiving the award President Tai said: “as NPUST aspired to be a local think tank and good neighbor to farmers, perhaps even before the word “USR” appeared, our teachers and students were already doing these things. We have been in the fields for a long time, working with agriculture, forestry, fisheries, animal husbandry and other industries. Through this we discovered many areas where production and the environment were in conflict with each other. Many teachers in our school responded by working hard on projects focused on conservation, community development and smart agriculture. These achievements not only promote the continuous growth of NPUST, but hopes are that as a result of the university’s influence, the ideas will spread to the government, which will amend laws and legislation, and establish a more comprehensive and sustainable way of thinking about ecological and humanistic co-prosperity”.
In the Ecological Common Good category, the “Golden Waves of Rice Reconcile with the Land” project headed up by Professor Yu-min Wang from at the NPUST International Irrigation Research Center won the “Model Award”. Through their research, they developed a rice probiotic enhancement system which can improve soil quality, strengthen rice root systems, save water by 30-50%, increase yields by 25-30%, reduce need for pesticides, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At present, there are more than 100 hectares of paddy fields in different places cooperating with the project. This friendly farming method has also won the favor of TECO Group who now uses rice produced by this technology as raw materials for its Mos Burger restaurants. The team’s goal is to spread this smart farming method to the whole of Taiwan, to help achieve the goal of sustainable development and fulfill its university social responsibilities under a circular economy framework for the rice industry.
NPUST emphasizes the dual application of sustainability and USR, with a goal of connecting different departments and organizing cross-disciplinary teams. Students can learn to cooperate on technology application as the different departments complement one another with their respective areas of expertise. The team which won the “Model Award” is an example of this, with researchers coming from the Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Biomechatronics. By bringing together technologies and perspectives from different fields, there is an opportunity to break through the blind spots of a single field of research and create new methods that are more innovative and which can meet contemporary needs.
The sustainable development objectives are the new international doctrine. With a near-to 100-year history as an agricultural school, NPUST has continuously worked to improve its educational concepts and technological innovations to keep them in line with the times. The honor of the “Comprehensive Performance Award” and “Model Award” came about thanks to good examples set by industry, government and academia, as well as the hard work of teachers and students of the whole school who have contributed what they have learned to society in their various capacities. And so, establishing a diversity of knowledge on campus and cultivating philanthropic kindness and empathy amongst students is the direction NPUST aims to follow as it strides towards becoming a sustainable centennial university.
