【GHRM】NSYSU Students Makes A Mark At Hult Prize Impact Summit 2021
The Hult Prize Impact Summit held in Taipei on the 9th of April 2021 proved to be an unforgettable experience for NSYSU students Rosie (GHRM MBA), Sam Lin (ICAPS) and Jonna (MIS). This year, the summit was held on the theme ‘Food for Good’ with a vision of building viable enterprises that will impact millions of people in the next decade, strengthen communities, increase incomes, feed the hungry and generate employment.
Hult Prize is a global competition organized annually that seeks to solve urgent pressing global issues through viable business ideas. The competition operates on more than 3000 campuses worldwide and organizes over 100 Impact Summit campuses globally every year. Initially, Sam Lin – the team leader - joined the NSYSU campus level Hult Prize competition which was organized in NSYSU for the first time. Sam and his team’s idea of launching an app that provides healthy meals in Taiwan was adjusted the third prize. Later, Sam Lin was looking for 2 more team members to develop his proposal and presented the idea at the Impact Summit. Rosie was glad to become a core team member and was responsible for the APP design and finance. When asked to join the team, Jonna was very enthusiastic and passionate about the project as she was a vegan and was conscious about healthy living. After coming together as a group, they worked hard on their project for more than a month before the competition.
Rosie commented that the Hult Prize changed her life and taught her valuable lessons that she could not gain from school. Through the competition, she learned to be a better team member, a better speaker and a better leader. She also got the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing people who inspired and encouraged her.
Rosie also complimented the professionalism of NSYSU Hult Prize organizers who are currently students from GHRM MBA and other departments of NSYSU. Moreover, according to Rosie, the other teams were not only outstanding but hard-working as well which inspired her. In the regional summit held in Taipei on 09th April 2021, Rosie and her team had the opportunity to join the pitches of various teams from different universities in Taiwan. She comments that their ideas were appealing, innovative, and practical and aims to make the world better in the theme of Food for Good.
After the competition, Jonna shared “Thanks Sam Lin for inviting me join this wonderful team and I think I will assign cram school for better future, thanks for your advice again, Rosie. Thank you too! Love your critical thinking and hope we can eat vegan food together.”
It wasn't all about the prize, but our students gained valuable knowledge and soft skills from the competition, which will undoubtedly help them in their future forays. Congratulations to Rosie, Sam Lin, and Jonna for performing brilliantly at the 2021 Hult Prize regional summit. This is just the start ahead of a bright and promising future, and we are confident that you will continue to make us proud.
【Honor】〔2021 Living in harmony with nature〕Photo Contest
National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) in Taiwan always pays attention to the environment and lives in harmony with nature as a role model. Whenever you visit NSYSU, you will definitely be impressed by the diverse environment here, ranging from environment to animals to plants and how people coexist with the earth. The International Student Association of the International programs aims to transfer this message and raise our student’s awareness of the environment and sustainable development by holding the “2021 Living in harmony with nature” photo contest this semester.
There are 13 teams of talented participants from various departments (including IBMBA, GHRM MBA, and the Department of Electrical Engineering). All the participants participated enthusiastically with their best photos. After an intense competition, we congratulate 4 winning teams from this photo contest.
We came out with two champions from this photo contest, including Trevor Joines and Cecelia Ha from GHRM MBA, and the third place was bagged by Laurine Pommier from IBMBA. For the team that got the most likes and shares from Facebook and Instagram, Gary Yuan from IBMBA and 莊博勛from the Department of Electrical Engineering(Team 3_Future Fish) were presented with the popularity award. The Student Association of the International Programs and the International Programs Office sincerely appreciate everyone who participated and supported this contest. Those photos were terrific and remarked with meaningful messages, which give us warm feeling and introspection of getting along with the nature and other creatures on the Mother earth.
Message from Author: 『I like taking photos and these are a few of my favorites. When I have more time I’m looking at getting back into dive photography but I have a few other ideas to try out on interesting subjects. Nature is always a great subject to explore but you never know what you’re going to find the day you go. You might get something spectacular or you might just come back with similar photos you have taken before. I hope people like these and I hope to add better shots in the future.』
Message from Author: 『2020 is indeed a tough year for everyone in the world. After 6 months in this beautiful little island, I really felt I had a second home, where I had friendly friends, respectable teachers, and very kind people. NSYSU campus is surrounded on three sides by mountains and also faces the open waters of Sizihwan Beach, thus making it a natural fortress. I have been to Tainan, Pingtung, Taichung, Nantou and was really fascinated by the natural sceneries.
Far away from the city, in the mountain, Cingjing Farm in Nantou is one of the most popular tourist spots in Taiwan. I had my first spring trip in 2021 with my friends there. During that time, I can enjoy fresh air, lush forests, beautiful flowers along the plains and hillside. Fortunately, I was able to watch a Sheep-sheering show in Green Green Grassland, which is an open pasture ground for livestock such as sheep and cows to roam and graze freely. When I saw the flock of sheep at a very close distance, they are running around the hill with a sense of freedom, with the backdrop of the majestic mountains, the blue sky, I felt all afflictions as if blown away. It is not just a show, but also a simple, comfortable life that we all aim for. It was really the scene of my dream life, with a scene immersed in beautiful nature. It also reminds me to cherish nature and protect our loving motherland.』
Message from Author: 『This photograph was captured in Alishan National Park, on the last day of a 15-day road trip around the island. It typically represents the atmosphere in this nature reserve which reminds us of a movie set. The small paths get lost in the fog, the treetops disappear, and a feeling of a new discovery invades us step by step. The thick fog in this photo plunges us directly into an atmosphere that is both mysterious and surprising. The angle of view allows us to become aware of the longevity of each of the trees, some of which are more than 2000 years old, and reminds us that human life expectancy is minimal compared to what nature can bring us. 』
Message from Author: 『This picture was taken in Alishan— a famous attraction in Taiwan. It was at 16:30, a slight breeze of fresh cold air gently moved the leaves on the trees, it was such a serene scene. In contrast, people were busy rushing for the last train of the day, which emphasizes how silent the forest was. On the other hand, the surface of the water reflects the sky and the giant trees around it, making it seem to be another picturesque wonderland with green filter caused by algae. 』
【IBMBA】Guest Lecture & Field Trip Mr. Lucas Lanski & HCP Pump Manufacturer Co., Ltd
On 9 th April 2021, Dr. Ryan Brading invited Lucas Lanski, one of our GHRM MBA alumni to be the guest speaker for students attending the courses: ‘Sustainability of Global Enterprise’, ‘Entrepreneurship Management and Practice, and ‘Productions and Operations Management’. Lucas is currently working for HCP Pump Manufacturer Co., Ltd. (HCP Pump), which is located in Pingtung, Taiwan. Despite his busy schedule, we were very grateful that he still managed to find time and share with us his inspiring stories and unique experiences in Taiwan.
The title of his topic was: “Surviving, studying, working and exploring: Taiwan from a foreign outlook”. Lucas’s lively and energetic personality brightened up the lecture room. The word “Bridge” as a metaphor was used to illustrate his daily commuting journey to Pingtung, but also, describe how he connects Taiwan with his homeland Poland. During the three-hour lecture, group discussions were held after he shared with students the context of the topics to be discussed.
After brainstorming and raising questions to Mr. Lanski, the lecture concluded when students began to present and share their ideas. Afterwards, we all took a group picture to remember this unique occasion.
In the afternoon, a field trip was arranged and students attending the morning guest lecture – went to visit HCP Pump Manufacturer Co., Ltd. (HCP Pump). Upon arrival, Mr. Lanski's colleague, Mr. Chester Wu, International Sales Supervisor, presented the company. Chester stressed that HCP Pump is globally well-known. Apart from having most of the shares in the Taiwanese market, it also sells its products in more than 60 countries worldwide. Their pumps are high quality and have been used in a variety of industries (e.g., Taiwan High-Speed Rail - HSR).
The students were then divided into two groups and started the tour around the factory. The whole process of manufacturing a pump was introduced, including how the assembly line works, and how the engine (heart of pump) is assembled. The tour guides also took the students to their laboratory where they tested the pumps, and where the biggest pump HCP makes can be seen.
The tour finally came to the company's showroom, where they demonstrated how the products work. Ending with a Q&A session, many interesting questions were raised and the students discussed what they had learned during this well-organized tour at HCP. This field trip concluded by offering a NSYSU certification of appreciation to the International Sales Manager, Ms. Christine Lai, and a group picture was taken to commemorate this exceptional learning experience for GHRM and IBMBA students that day. It was a very successful and interesting day and the “bridge” between HCP Pump and the College of Management at NSYSU was built.
【IBMBA】Gathering with Faculty-Picnicking at the Hamasen Railway Cultural
To forge a strong bond among students and faculties in IBMBA and GHRM MBA programs, the Student Association (SA) held “Gathering with Faculty” on the 10th of April 2021 at the Hamasen Railway Cultural Park. Due to the pandemic situation, the SA held the gathering outdoors with light lunch and a variety of activities to pull off unforgettable moments.
The gathering time began with a speech from Professor Frank Wong, the deputy director of the International programs. He thanked the SA for holding this great and creative event at Hamasen Railway Cultural Park and encouraged the students to participate in the future events held by the SA and the international programs office.
During the gathering, there were three games, including Bingo, catchphrase and untie the knots. The Bingo game required participants to answer some questions and find other members to sign on if they had the same answer. The winner is the one who marks the selected answers with tiles in the shortest time. From IBMBA, GHRM MBA students to the professor, all attendees were excited to take part in this game, they ran around to ask their friends’ signatures and tried their best to become the winners. Finally, the Bingo ended with the victory of five students – James Tseng, Reianthong Vongsangkam and Michal Polacek (the first-year GHRM MBA students), Elsa (the second-year GHRM MBA student), Bruce Lin (the second-year IBMBA student)
The second game – catchphrase. All participants were divided into four teams (A, B, C, and D), three members per team with each question category. Each team would nominate one member to explain the target word out loud and let other members understand and guess the right word. The trick is, that person can’t say the word (or any variant of the word) or that team loses the round. The winner of the catchphrase was team C – Demi Wen (the first-year IBMBA student), James Tseng, and Michal Polacek (the first-year GHRM MBA students).
The last game was “untie the knots” - Starting in a circle, participants connect hands with two others people within the group to form the human knot. As a team, they must then attempt to unravel the “human knot” by untangling themselves without breaking the chain of hands. There were two teams in this game, and the first team was super-fast when finishing the game within 20 seconds and helped another team to untie the knots. Through this game, Rossie Lim – SA president shared a meaningful message. In our life, there are many “knots” – challenges that we have to go through. We can overcome some knots by ourselves, some we can’t, but we still have friends and family standing by our sides, so do not hesitate to ask them for help and help others when they need it.
In the end, International programs wished all students and faculties with a decent time at NSYSU and presented each participant with a cute gift. In the near future, the SA will hold many other events to create intimate time for both students, faculty, and staff in IBMBA and GHRM MBA programs.
【GHRM】Travel Curation Tour Designing-Community Engagement
GHRM MBA, College of Management, NSYSU invited Daniel Cheng - the founder and CEO of Redefine Tourism Mixer (RTM), to give a speech at the Consulting methods and practices course. To help students designing their consulting projects, Daniel shared his story about how his company has become one of the largest Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that helps develop travel start-ups and internet tour operators in Taiwan and the region.
Daniel began his lecture by introducing the considerable impacts of the current pandemic on tourism in general and proposing his solution for this situation: Travel Curation Tour with Community Engagement. Born in Linbian, a rural township in western Pingtung known for its seafood and wax apples, Daniel realizes the local fisherman's problem: they are not confident in what they do for a living. Therefore, his objective is to create the added value for his organization and the people in the area. The solution to the problem is to find a way to utilize the resources, including fish and water that are granted. As a result, "Fish Forest project" has been designed to capture and connect all Travel Curation Tour elements. In order to implement Fish Forest, Daniel and his colleagues visited and talked to villagers to understand their needs and observed their daily routine to collect relevant information. The data analysis, later on, was used to design the Action plan comprising of three steps:
1. Travel Curation
In this component, the Travel Agency needs to identify what are the most important for their Product Purpose and Marketing Purpose. Basically, they are the principles to attract tourists as well as to customize the services so that they are unique to each group of travelers.
2. Talent Incubator
This part describes how his company can create value and benefit for the local community through various marketing channels, especially online marketing. Also, Daniel has launched different campaigns to support both store-owners and travelers, in which the most well-known program is Travel workers. These activities help local people realize that they are visible to the world and their work is acknowledged, and they gradually become more confident.
3. Local Translator
Fish Forest also helps the local people translate their know-how into meaningful materials such as board games or teaching booklets to educate the tourists and their children about their work and their lives. Simultaneously, these materials can facilitate the transferring of expertise from parents to children in a value exchange manner.
Daniel has inspired value creation among students, and he received a lot of questions regarding his work and how he can achieve his goal. Finally, he promoted the coming campaign for Travelers to the students in class and promised that he would inform them of information as soon as possible.
【MSRC】Things You Will Not Learn from Classes: Open Access and Predatory Journals
On March 30th, the Management Studies Research Center of NSYSU held an academic research ethics lecture titled "Things You Will Not Learn from Classes: Open Access and Predatory Journals" at CM1037. The lecture was hosted by Prof. Hsu Shih-Chieh (Professor in the Department of Information Management and Director of the Management Studies Research Center) and given by Prof. Wong Ho-Ting (Assistant Professor, on the Department of Business Management and Deputy Director of International Programs); the participants were all very enthusiastic about the event. Not only did they gain knowledge of journal-related discriminative capabilities, but each participant also went home with a Golden Diamond Pineapple.
In the lecture, Prof. Wong discussed the classification of academic journals, the reason for open access's birth, and the business model of journals. He also talked about the differences between traditional and open access journals, an example of a questionable publisher, the introduction of predatory journals, and tips to recognize whether a journal is predatory or not. Moreover, Prof. Wong provided an interactional test to help participants work out whether a journal is reliable or highly dangerous.
There are thousands of journals in the world, and grad students might have unnecessary fears about them due to a lack of understanding, which makes completing a research degree even harder. The "Open Access Academic Journal" ecosystem was one of the main topics in this lecture, along with the technique for identifying a predatory journal, and this knowledge will mitigate the related dangers in both students' and teachers' academic careers.
【NSYSU & NTU】Conference of Contemporary Management Concepts and Applications held by NSYSU & NTU
On April 3rd and 4th, at the EMBA Center of the College of Management, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) held a seminar titled "2021 Management Concept and Application Conference: Asian Business Management under Macroeconomic Uncertainty" with the College of Management, National Taiwan University (NTU). The conference was an academic platform aimed at providing an opportunity for scholars to share their research ideas, and also gave advice about Asia-Pacific corporations and institutions' current challenges and up-and-coming issues in development.
In the opening speech, Dean Hwang San-Yih(黃三益)of the College of Management, NSYSU, stated that he wanted to give special thanks to the team from NTU's College of Management, led by Dean Hu Shing-Yang(胡星陽). With their cooperation, the NSYSU team had been able to organize the seminar successfully. He also thanked the sponsor Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TWSE) for their enthusiastic participation in education, the chairperson of JIU ZHEN NAN FOODS, Lee Hsiong-Qing(李雄慶)(Honorary Doctor of NSYSU, Outstanding Alumni), and the Chief of the JZN Brand Research Center, Lin Feng-Hue(林芬慧), for providing 170 souvenirs for the assembled scholars and adding an honorable touch to the conference.
Four international scholars gave online speeches that increased the conference's influence: Prof. Chung-Piaw Teo, Prof. Hsin-Chun Chen, Prof. Carl R. Chen, and Prof. In-Sue Oh. They are all influential representatives in academic research, and are all chief editors of internationally well-known academic journals including Operations Research, Management Science, ACM TMIS, ACM TOIS, IEEE IS, IEEE SMC, MISQ, DSS, JASIST, IREF, and JAP. By sharing their years of experience of writing and reviewing academic articles in their speeches, they allowed the participant scholars to gain a lot and create many brand-new ideas. Prof. In-Sue Oh also considered it very impressive that even during an epidemic crisis, Taiwan was still able to host in-person academic events.
Dean Hwang of NSYSU reminded the scholars to go to Sizihwan Beach to enjoy the beautiful sunset, which is considered one of the eight most beautiful views in Sizihwan, and to make sure to see Formosan Macaque. By arrangement of Chief Hsu, Jack Shih-Chieh(徐士傑), of the Management Studies Research Center of NSYSU, the participants enjoyed a dinner at the Sunset Beach Resort on the campus at the end of the first day of the seminar. With the unique sunset and exquisite delicacies, it was an ideal end to an enriching day.
118 articles were submitted to this seminar, presented in 32 sessions. The articles’ authors came from 50 different universities domestically, and about 170 scholars participated in the event. Moreover, there were nine awards, including the Editor's Choice Awards, Best Paper Award, and Outstanding Paper Award, which were presented to honor outstanding academic research. Award-winning authors were also invited to submit their work to Sun Yat-Sen Management Review or NTU Management Review, which are both first-level core journals of domestic TSSCI.
Chief Hsu of the Management Studies Research Center congratulated all the award winners and thanked the scholars for participating in this event during the holidays. All scholars were invited to exchange academic ideas in beautiful Sizihwan at any time, and the two-day seminar ended successfully.
【 HRM】Institute of Human Resource Management ties alliance with Aurora Cloud to cultivate 150 HR talents in 2 years (Discover NSYSU)
(Provided by Institute of Human Resource Management) With the advent of the post-epidemic era, AI and data application have become trends of the digital transformation era. According to a survey conducted by KPMG, a world-renowned consulting firm, data analysis will become an important cornerstone in HR management in the future. Institute of Human Resource Management (HRM), NSYSU, represented by Director Nai-Wen Chi, and Aurora Cloud under the Aurora Group, represented by General Manager of the Business Division Chin-Pao Lin, signed a cooperation agreement to jointly cultivate professionals in HR data analysis and assist enterprises in digital transformation in human resources. Both parties will start cooperating in case study courses, research projects, platform systems authorization, and talent cultivation to nurture over 150 HR professionals over the period of two years.
Director Chi said that HR digital analysis has been a focus in the recent transformation and development of the Institute of HRM at NSYSU. Besides the data analysis group of the Asia-Pacific Human Resource Management Program, the Institute also established a course in HR data analysis to teach students to apply technologies and software for statistical analysis commonly applied in HR data analysis to analyze real-life data in groups. Director Chi said that in the future, the students of this course will analyze the data provided by Aurora Cloud, combining academic capacity with the data of the industry to help the industry recruit talents, train employees, and manage performance for a more in-depth analysis of HR data to further forecast and develop a more precise management strategy.
General Manager Lin said that the future role of HR will become more active than passive and that HR departments will play a strategic role in enterprises. Such technologies in HR as Big Data or AI can help investigate problems in the organizational development and provide strategic advice. The HR system and AI interview system authorized by Aurora Cloud will be available for the faculty and students of the Institute of HRM for teaching and research. The systems include many important HR data and indicators. It is expected that the cooperation with academic teams will result in more innovative values and applications to increase the predictive capability of the industry in talent management.
The Institute of HRM stated that Aurora’s business philosophy focuses on giving back to society and thus, it is committed to cultivating future digital HR talents and that the AI interview system has been adopted in many well-known companies of the technological industry, manufacturing, and financial holding groups to improve the efficiency and accuracy of talent selection, and has a wide range of applications, including university recruitment, reserve staff, and overseas recruitment. AI-assisted recruitment has become a popular trend in HR management. The Institute of HRM and Aurora Cloud are expected to jointly organize an AI interview workshop and courses and seminars on the digital transformation trends, taught by a team of lecturers from Aurora Cloud on campus to allow students to experience the latest trends and systems in their future workplace.