Huafan University

Established in 1990. Renamed in 1993, 1997. Highly acclaimed by both local communities and around the world, Huafan has a strong commitment to applying knowledge in campus environment, research, teaching, and in services to society.

Education of Enlightenment and Virtue Education as Priority, The Ven. Hiu Wan, founder of Huafan, advocated "Education of Enlightenment" as our ideal. She also proposed “Integration of Humanities and Technology with Equal Emphasis on Mutual Enrichment of Compassion and Wisdom” as our educational guidelines. These involve self-awakening, self-development and rational thinking based on Chinese ethics and Buddhist compassion. Our objectives are to cultivate the students' academic competency as well as to foster deeper understandings of virtue behaviors, thereby gradually alternate the integrity of their personality. In order to help students achieve these objectives so as to ultimately enjoy a progressive life-changing experience with individual visions, Huafan has been dedicated to implement an array of consulting seminars, curricular improvisations, and societal activities.

Huafan is proud to have received “Teaching Excellence” awards from the Ministry of Education. Since 2006, for four consecutive academic years, Huafan is awarded a total of NT$190,485,000. Among the 71 universities (not including Two-year and Four-year Institutes of Technology) in Taiwan, Huafan is one of the nineteen universities to be honored by MOE as an excellent model of higher education. As Huafan regards students as the core component of a university, our small-size classroom has brought great impact to the practice of excellence in teaching. Together with varieties kinds of research activities and a series of consultation workshops, Huafan has become a representative school for teaching excellence. Under the auspicious of MOE’s Teaching Excellence Project, Huafan established a “Teaching Innovation and Development Center” in 2006, devoting to develop and design a wide variety of innovative teaching activities to further enrich our academic quality and to build a more positive attitude in learning.

The Ven. Hiu Wan had high expectations for University faculty to play not only the role of professional researchers but also of experienced mentors who work as student consultants. Prior to educational excellence in order to ensuring teaching quality, Huafan is keenly aware of the importance of providing instructional services and consultation for students. In order to enrich students’ learning and life, Huafan has adopted mentor system and peer study groups as two educational strategies. For making classroom an encouraging learning environment, students will autonomously seek help from each other. On the one hand, those who are excellent in certain subjects can lead their peers for further discussions and experiments. As a result, students learn to develop higher and healthier EQ while incorporating knowledge of their specialties to consolidate strong interpersonal relationships among peers. In 2007, Huafan established the “Student Career and Life Development Center” and “Student Learning Resource Center,” which are structured originally from the earlier student affair consultation system. Together with our full-time faculty mentor system, Huafan endeavors to provide advices and assistance to support students in academic learning, personality cultivation, and career planning.

Within a Mid-term academic affair planning, Huafan aims to blend academe with activism by developing excellence in teaching and consulting. However, as the Delphi of knowledge and the center of the academia, researches contribute greatly to the academic benchmark positions in higher education. Aside from all kinds of awards and fellowships to support faculty’s researches, academic conferences and seminars as well as grants are provided to support international presentations and publications. Huafan endeavors to concentrate resources to promote featured research forums. Five research centers have been launched in August 2006 to fully represent the research dynamics of the university: the Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, Cultural Heritage Research Center, Sustainable Development Research Center of Slope Land, Calligraphy Research Center, Center for Ven. Hiu Wan Studies. A fruitful cooperation and integration of research resources among departments demonstrates that the featured researches at Huafan present distinguished strengths; these effectively show contributions in academic publications, research project funding, or artistic exhibitions and performances.

According to the 2010 report of Taiwanese ESI dissertation statistics, Engineering at Huafan is ranked one of the top universities, whose worldwide dissertation publications have been quoted as 1 percent of the universities among others. In order to encourage students working on innovative researches, each department and graduate institute at Huafan has its independent seminal research project or thematically designed seminars. Prompted by a performance-based improvement plan, Huafan hopes that students will fully participate in the research fields of their directing professors. The establishment of student innovation prize aims to train students’ dexterity while also enhancing their professional knowledge.

There are separate dormitories for male and female students, providing housing for nearly 1000 students. Freshmen (except those who reside in Shihding, Shenkeng, and Wenshan District) are all eligible to apply for dormitories. Huafan dorms are well-equipped with commercial dryer, refrigerator, food processor and kitchenware, public computer station, commercial xerox machine, and sports equipment. In the student recreation lounge, there are television and daily newspapers. Each room is fully furnished with a telephone, Internet connection, air-conditioner and heater along with other living facilities. First aid, ambulance, and emergency alarm and evacuation system are in operation.