Sustainability Workshop

College of Management (COM), Chung Hsing University held the "2022 Sustainable Workshop" between August 18 to September 7. It was jointly taught by Rogier Busser from the Amsterdam School of International Business, and Lin Yueh-Neng, the Associate Dean of COM. The workshop attracted scholars from seven countries, including the Netherlands, Taiwan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Thailand, and Indonesia. In addition to the participation of scholars, the workshop also invited two well-known Taiwanese companies to share their sustainable policies. Mr. Sherman Hsieh, the Sustainability Director of Oright, and Mr. David Hu, the General Manager of TAIWAN EPSON, shared their experiences with the participants.

Five student groups also presented their achievements at the workshop, covering topics such as carbon reduction policies in different countries, carbon reduction start-up ideas, and corporate ESG results. Through this workshop, students learned from international experts and businesses about how to practice sustainable development and showcase their achievements in this area.

We used the Gather virtual platform to create a more enriching experience for this workshop. Different from regular video conferencing software, the Gather interface can be adjusted according to different events and provides various functions. We transformed Gather into a realistic stage and provided a platform for participating teams to display competition data. In addition, we set up online gathering areas for teams and judges on Gather, allowing participants to interact with each other and experience something different from other online courses. Through these unique features, we hope to enhance the sense of participation among participants and create an experience that is different from other online courses.

"Diversity" is the perfect word to describe 2023's Sustainability Workshop. Half of our students are international students from various countries. Most of them even don't study in Taiwan. They are the students of NCHU's international partner schools. Along with the local students, the rich discussions and sparks that these diverse perspectives fostered are everywhere. I quoted a speech made by a European student whose teammates are from four different countries:

 "all that different perspective is really enchanting... now I could broaden my horizon and also look at other nations (and) other cultures. But (a lot of) difficulties they have to cope with because there is a lot of difference..."

Not surprisingly, almost every student gave the same feedback after the workshop. This is indeed a good ending for a five-year project (Higher Education Sprout Project 2018-2022 / 高等教育深耕計畫 2018-2022, National Chung Hsing University).  

(Ching-ching Hou, College of Management)