fulbright Taiwan online journal

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: Interview

Hong Jiang: Nature, Culture, and Geography

Dr. Hong Jiang is an Associate Professor of Geography and Environment from University of Hawaii at Manoa, and her Fulbright project is on Cultural Geography of Tea in Taiwan. While her Fulbright post at National Taiwan University is lectureship, she has been able to use the opportunity to build research collaborations on the study of tea in Taiwan, and has gained much in combining teaching and research. Hong Jiang teaches in the area of cultural geography, and has been doing research on tea and culture in imperial China and contemporary Taiwan.

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Bryce Christensen: Bringing the Xing Moment to Cross-cultural Literary Study

Dr. Christensen taught at National Taiwan University for 2019-20 as a visiting Fulbright professor. He had two classes, respectively on Willa Cather and Mark Twain, in which he found students in different cultures interpreted literature in different but meaningful ways.

Dr. Bryce Christensen, professor of English at Southern Utah University, received his Ph. D. in English literature from Marquette University. His current research focuses on the relationship between science and poetry, on non-Western literature (especially classical Chinese literature), and on utopian literature.

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Brian Bruya: Cross-Cultural Philosophy in the Classroom

Dr. Brian Bruya won his second Fulbright Scholarship to Taiwan in 2019-2020. His project is titled ” Cross-cultural Philosophy in the classroom.” Due to the diversified backgrounds of the students, Dr. Bruya’s class at NTU became an ideal setting to teach comparative philosophy.

Dr. Brian Bruya, is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Michigan University, and an author of books and articles in the fields of comparative philosophy, cognitive science, and educational psychology. He is also a translator and has published translations of a number of popular comic books on Chinese philosophy, which have been featured in the New York Times.

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Carl Minzner: Who Are We? Evolution of Immigration Policy in Taiwan and Mainland China

Professor Carl Minzner is a Fulbright Cross-Strait Scholar during 2019-2020. He came to Taiwan to conduct research on demographic change, particularly on population aging and policy in Asia. Professor Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance, and a law professor at Fordham University. He is the author of “End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise“, exploring China’s transition away from the three-decades-long reform era characterized by political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth. Prof. Minzner holds a B.A. from Stanford University, a M.I.A. from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

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Lay Kou: Integrating Best Practices in Taiwanese Culture of Learning Into the American Pedagogy

This video traces the journey of an elementary school teacher who chose, as part of her Fulbright project, to study teaching best practices in Taiwan and explore the rich cultural traditions of the Taiwanese people. Lay Kou is a dual language immersion teacher in Utah. Prior to receiving the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching, she was awarded Teacher of the Month thrice, KSL News Radio & Zions Bank Teacher Feature, and District Outstanding Educator of the Year. Her Fulbright project focused on Taiwanese culture and teaching best practices.

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Timothy Clifford: Prayers and Local Environmental Crises in Early Modern China

Dr. Timothy Clifford’s project focuses on environmental prayers authored by local government officials in sixteenth and seventeenth-century China and what these prayers can tell us about state management of environmental crises. He applied the database on ancient Chinese literature along with local gazetteer to examine the environmental history of early modern China.

Dr. Timothy Clifford is a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. He received his Ph.D. on East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a 2018-2019 Fulbright scholar and visiting researcher at Academia Sinica in the Institute of History and Philology.

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Latoya Kamdang: Spatial Explorations of Indigenous Architecture and Urban Settlements in Taiwan

Professor Latoya Kamdang’s Fulbright project researched two indigenous architecture sites and two urban informal settlement sites in Taiwan, including one World Monument Fund selected site – Kucapungane. Prof. Kamdang also co-taught with her host Professor Shu-Mei Huang at National Taiwan University and provided insights on preservation and conservation. During her grant, Prof. Kamdang also traveled to South Korea and Hong Kong to expand her international connections in the East Asia Pacific region.

Latoya Nelson Kamdang is a U.S. Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan. Her host institution is the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at the National Taiwan University. She is a Registered Architect, Certified Interior Designer, and LEED Accredited Professional. Her experience spans architecture, planning, exhibit design, industrial design, and interior design. Latoya has developed her career in practice while maintaining a connection to academic research and teaching at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

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Chih-Chin Chou: Social Support for Indigenous People with Disability and Chronic Illness in Taiwan

Dr. Chih-Chin Chou came back to Taiwan with a specialty on Rehabilitation & Mental Health Counseling after she departed 25 years ago. She aimed to research the population that she is most passionate about – indigenous people. She found the majority of research in the field is either on indigenous people or people with disability but lack of ones that covered both. By face-to-face interactions and knowledge sharing, she gained people’s trust and built connects locally.

Dr. Chou is the Program Director for the Rehabilitation & Mental Health Counseling Program at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include psychiatric rehabilitation, research methodology, social support, vocational outcomes for people with disabilities, rehabilitation education, international rehabilitation, and positive psychology. She has published over 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals and eight book chapters. Dr. Chou has received numerous grants including three current training grants totaling almost $2.5 million.

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Dominique Murdock, Jhih-Kai Yang, Alicia Bradley, Yuta Otake: English Teacher Training & Research

The role of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Trainer is to support the ETA (English Teaching Assistant) by providing personal professional development, workshops, and observations. In addition to their routines, TEFL Trainers also helped to organize the first-ever in Fulbright East Asia Pacific Regional Workshop in 2019. Through these projects, ETAs and TEFL Trainers built a tight connection, picturing a fuller diversity of the culture through education.

Dominique Murdock holds an M.A. degree from the University of Southern California in TESOL. Jhih-Kai Yang has an M.A. degree from the University of Taipei in English Instruction. It’s both their second year as TEFL Trainers at Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. Alicia Bradley holds an M.A. degree from Columbia University in International Educational Development. Yuta Otake has an M.A. degree from New York University in TESOL. Four of them were grantees of the “FSE English Teacher Training & Research Awards” in 2018-19.

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Chia-Chi Teng: Cyber Security Education and Deep Machine Learning

Dr. Chia-Chi Teng spent a semester at National Tsing Hua University to help develop a new Master degree program in cybersecurity. Dr. Teng utilizes laboratory experiments to strengthen students’ practical skills. In addition, machine learning is incorporated for detecting cyber intrusion. To Dr. Teng, handling cyberattacks is like solving a puzzle, which requires patience and dedication. He believes international cooperation on cyber education will lead governments to a more secure and self-protectable future.

Dr. Teng has 30 years of experiences in software research and development. During his 17 years tenure at Microsoft, he was part of the development teams for Windows 95, Internet Explorer, Microsoft TV, Microsoft Network (MSN) and Windows 7. He transitioned to academia in 2008 and became a professor in Information Technology at Brigham Young University. His primary research interests are in healthcare IT as he continues to consult and advise a number of healthcare technology startup companies internationally.

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Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal