Bringing together four other member universities, the UNTA Secretariat organized its first ever cross-border online workshop: “Young Voices in SDGs”. Hosted on November 24th out of the Creative Thinking Center in the NPUST Library and International Conference Hall, “Young Voices in SDGs” included online sharing and audience ballot casting, with hopes of promoting research exchange between students of member universities and increasing their research capabilities. The Dean of the NPUST Office of International Affairs, Pomin Li, delivered the opening remarks and Vice-Dean Herlin Chien served as chair.
The workshop was divided into two sections, the first of which was “Research Sharing”. For this section, Professor Yu-Min Wang of the NPUST Department of Civil Engineering, Professor Way Long of the Department of Wood Science and Prof. Kuo-Pin Chuang of the Graduate Institute for Animal Vaccine Technology were invited to serve has moderators.
Masters and doctoral students from National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (TWN), the University of Brawijaya (IDN), IPB University (IDN), Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi (THA) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (MYS) presented special reports on three topics including “Smart Agriculture”, “Circular Economy” and “Ecological Restoration” and shared on specific research projects.
With students freely choosing the sessions and topics they were interested in, around 30-40 people participated in each one—for about 100 overall. At the end of each session, the moderator selected the best research project out of those which were presented.
The second section of the conference was the “Round Table”. For this, student societies from NPUST, University of Brawijaya, IPB University and Rajamangala University of Technology provided group briefings on “sustainability” issues. They also reflected on the topics and offered suggests for actions that could be taken. The group from IPB University, for instance, raised many student exchange programs and community service programs which integrate SDGs. Meanwhile, the group from University of Brawijaya looked at current difficulties facing the farming industry in Indonesia and the problem of lack of nutrition amongst children. They also introduced the audience to policies that apply current technology to traditional farming.
At the end of the workshop, Vice-Dean Herlin Chien announced the best briefing based on votes from the audience. The team from University of Brawijaya won the first place with more than 80% of the votes. Liwei Liu, a student from the NPUST Department of Civil Engineering, Guanting Cheng, from the NPUST Department of Wood Design, and Eva Cristine Ronauli, from IPB University won the best research project in their respective sessions.
