National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) serves as the permanent secretariat of the University Network for Tropical Agriculture (UNTA), assisting the alliance schools in organizing annual membership meetings and facilitating exchanges and cooperation among global partners. This year’s (2023) UNTA annual assembly was held by the University of Brawijaya in Indonesia on August 8th/9th under the theme of “Innovation for sustainable agriculture production, ensuring climate-resilient and digital agriculture”. More than 250 people, including university presidents, vice-presidents, professors and students from 9 member schools in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan took part in the assembly.

NPUST, the A-Kong-Tien Rotary Club, and the Fund for Children and Families (FCF) jointly hosted an education camp for students from disadvantaged rural communities in Southern Taiwan. From July 17th to 21st the “Jingsi Lake Scientist’s Exploration Camp” was held to promote Industry 4.0, robot applications in industry, IoT, Green energy science and more. Combined with care activities for disadvantaged communities, the five-day science camp was organized for high school (vocational) students registered at Family Support Centers in Kaohsiung, Pingtung, and Taitung counties. The opening ceremony was held at 9:00 am on July 18th at the NPUST Data Center. University president, Chin-Lung Chang, A-Kong-Tien Rotary Club director, Sophia Hsu and former director Cheng-Kai Huang, former director of Fund for Children and Families, Cheng-bin Chen, and Professor Hudson Hsu were joined by teachers and students from the university for the unveiling ceremony.

Every summer break, teachers and students from the NPUST Center for Teacher Education conduct Schweitzer Service-Learning activities designed to provide middle school students in rural areas of Pingtung County with an interesting summer learning experience. The theme of this year’s event was “Life×Nature: A Summer Camp Where Life Meets Nature”. Under the guidance of Karin Ya-Ling Wu of the Center for Teacher Education, 10 teachers and students put their respective strengths to practice, and used their personal knowledge in such areas as agriculture, forestry, animals and livestock, aquaculture, biotechnology, civil engineering, fashion design, food, child care and more to provide creative cross-domain learning activities for 60 students from Nanchow Junior High School and Jia Dong Junior High School in Pingtung County. Through diverse learning activities, the junior high school students were able to discover and explore their personal strengths and career interests. On July 13th, from 10:00 to 11:30 am, the results of the Schweitzer Service-Learning activities were presented at Jia Dong Junior High School.

On July 4 (2023), the NPUST of College of Agriculture and Office of International Affairs jointly held the “International Sustainable Agriculture Workshop” at the College of Agriculture. During the workshop, discussions were held on issues related to sustainable agriculture, and experiences from South Africa, Eswatini, Somaliland, Nigeria and Guam were shared with the participants.

The 24th Sustainable Development Management Seminar was held on May 26, 2023 at the NPUST College of Management under the theme of “Creating Sustainable Symbiosis and Service Innovation in a Post-Epidemic, Artificial Intelligence Era”. Experts and scholars from industry, government, academia were invited to participate. A call was made for papers to be published in 16 different fields of research, including 1. Industrial innovation and entrepreneurship management; 2. International business management; 3. Knowledge management; 4. Technology and R&D management; 5. Production and operation management; 6. Marketing management; 7. Decision analysis and quantitative methods; 8. Human resources and organizational management; 9. Agricultural enterprise operation and management; 10. Information management and e-commerce; 11. Finance and accounting; 12. Fashion operations and management; 13. Catering, tourism and service management; 14. Urban and rural, landscape and recreation management; 15. Strategic management; and 16. Other management issues. Professor Hao Chiang Lin of National Tainan University was also invited to speak on “Creating with AI: Combining ChatGPT+ Midjourney Painting with Modern Poetry and Visual Art”.

NPUST Taiwan Sustainability Hub (TSH@NPUST) held the “2023 Symposium on Low-Carbon Food Production and Ecosystem Services” at the university’s Big Data Center on May 19th. A number of related professionals were invited to participate in the discussions, including Rudolf de Groot, chair of the Ecosystem Services Partnership, Professor Yumin Wang of the NPUST International Service Center for Irrigation R&D, Director Wen-Hao Leu of the Kaohsiung Irrigation Association, Director Yi-Sheng Yang of the ICLEI Kaohsiung Capacity Center, and Director Namue Lee of the Asian Office of the International Alliance for Ecosystem Services.