by ChuckChen
10:20 a.m.: On most days I would be dozing off somewhere, but not today. Today I am fidgeting in the Chair’s office, waiting for her to speak. No, I’m not getting a lecture from her because I flunked drama (luckily), I am here for the sole purpose of interviewing her. Ever since she gave a short 20-minute pep talk to the new freshmen right before the semester started, I wanted to find out why she didn’t seem very friendly to students. And now I found myself in her office, nervous. But any impressions I had of her were immediately dispelled when she began speaking. Her informality was very comforting; she began by telling me that in fact she is married to Prof. Chiang Tai-fen’s (姜台芬) brother, and that Prof. Chiang is her sister-in-law! I then asked her about how her life has changed since she became Chair. She said that the main difference between being a professor-chair and just being a professor is all the extra administrative work, which requires 3 to 4 hours of extra work every day. Not to mention all the meetings. This really eats into her research and preparation time, she remarked, and it takes a long time to get used to. Then she began to tell me what she would like to do as Chair. She mentioned that the government was giving a 500-million-dollar subsidy to schools that can compete on an international level, to help them improve their the World College Rankings. The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Prof. Perng Ching-hsi, asked her to come up with a plan for our College. Prof. Chiu decided we should form a Translation Center and a Writing Clinic, and turn the evening division into a Master’s program that focused on translation and oral communication. Our regular M.A. program focuses on literature and cultural studies. She believes that such an institution will help elevate our department’s image in the eyes of the general public, because the new program would be devoted to practical English. Then there was a question that I had been itching to ask: why she did not seem to want close relationships with students. Prof. Chiu was a little surprised when I asked this, saying that she didn’t mean it that way. She told me that she wasn’t against student-teacher relationships, just that she thinks that peer relations are more important. From her view, in this stage of our lives we have already become adults, and we should be able to make decisions for ourselves. If we do have questions, we should go ask our peers first before going to professors, because our peers affect us a lot more than a professor, and after we graduate it is our peers who will have the most influence and impact on us. Therefore she holds that it is more important for us to develop peer relationships. However, she added that she welcomes students to come to her office, and not only in times of crisis. She told me that her office hours are from three to six in the afternoon on weekdays, and that students are welcome to come during those hours. After this long reply, I realized that I was totally mistaken in Prof. Chiu’s attitude toward students. She isn’t unfriendly to us at all, in fact she is glad to help with any problem. Then I asked her how she felt about our school and our students. She replied that when she was teaching Freshman English, the classes with students from other departments often gave her the most interesting experiences, because these students always saw things from different perspectives and were eager for discussion. She said that the main reason Taida is the top university in Taiwan is because of its students and faculty. Many other universities have the same amount of high-tech hardware, and some universities are larger. But Taida stands out because of its students and their creativity. Being in such a good school, said Prof. Chiu, students should grab every chance to learn as much as they can, either from their peers or their teachers. Nearing the end of the interview, I asked the Chair if she had any plans for retirement. She replied that she hadn’t even thought of what she might do after she retired. She wants to keep teaching for as long as she can because she loves it; she loves the students and it’s the best way for her to keep alive and energetic. Don’t ever leave us, Prof. Chiu. After we concluded and took some pictures she invited me and the photographer to lunch, but since both of us had class we said it would have to wait. This was the first interview I had ever done, and it also changed my view of the Chair and gave me a deeper understanding of our department and the importance of peer relationships. All in a days work… a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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