Jing-Pha Tsai, President at Asia University (AU), and Sheng-Houng Lin, Deputy Dean of the Creative Design College at AU, were invited recently to visit Beijing Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University and Beijing Institute of Technology for academic interchanges. In the meantime, the Creative Product Design Department at AU signed an MOU of academic interchanges with the Industrial Design Department at Tsinghua University. Besides, Tsinghua University is now building an art museum and hopes to have a collaboration with Asia Museum of Modern Art at AU in the future, encouraging cross-strait aesthetics education.

    As the No. 1 in the Ranking of Top Universities in Greater China, Tsinghua University is also the No. 20 of the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences as well as one of the 985 and 211 schools in China. On Apr. 1, AU President Jing-Pha Tsai was invited to visit the Academy of Art and Design at Tsinghua University while the art museum planned by the Academy would be completed soon. Xiao-Po Lu, Dean of the Academy of Art and Design at Tsinghua University, were aware that AU had a world-class museum  Asia Museum of Modern Art, and expressed his admiration for AU’s alliances with the art museums of international renowned universities, such as Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and The University of Tokyo. He especially consulted AU President Tsai about the details of planning an opening exhibition of the art museum and sought for opportunities of future cooperation.

  Sheng-Houng Lin, Chair of the Creative Product Design Department at AU, and Chao Zhao, Chair of the Industrial Design Department at Tsinghua University, signed an MOU of academic interchanges, and reached conclusions including teacher and student exchanges, dual-degree offering, research collaboration, short-term studies, teaching sites at two schools, presenting international journal papers and participating international competitions jointly.

  Dean Lu pointed out that Tsinghua University usually signed MOUs with schools which were listed top 3 of the field in their countries and that the interchange with Asia University in Taiwan was the first exception because of its impressive school-running. In 14 years since its foundation, AU has made a huge progress in the international ranking and is the youngest university listed within the top 100 in three rankings by THE. Furthermore, AU students performed outstandingly in such international design awards as iF and Red Dot in Germany, and G-mark in Japan, winning the most medals that are ranked No. 1 in the higher education system in Taiwan. The hard works and efforts on school-running made AU one of the partners that the Academy of Art and Design at Tsinghua University would like to be in alliance with.

  Ling Liang, a junior of the Creative Product Design Department at AU, said that it was more difficult than winning a lottery to have a chance of being an exchange student, studying in a short term, or organizing international design activities at Tsinghua University, a No. 20 school in the ranking of world universities. She would strive for the learning opportunity and cherish it when applications are open.