▎FEATURES

Office of General Affairs oversees all infrastructure projects on NTU campus, which are crucial to the everyday life of faculty, staff, and students. This year, the Office was assigned four major projects by the President: the construction of a student dormitory at the intersection of Xinhai Road and Keelung Road, the expansion of faculty dormitories, NTU TEC on Zhubei campus, and the Centennial Memorial Museum, in observance of the university’s 100^th anniversary.

The Office awarded the tender for the student dormitory at the end of September 2023, with the completion expected in 2028. The winning consortium is the team of architect Jou-Min Lin, recipient of the Public Commission Golden Quality Award. The dormitory will have a capacity of 3,750 beds. The Office is delighted that the animation of the winning project sparked lively discussions on Facebook among students and received a lot of positive feedback upon its release on the internet.

NTU has planned six new sites for faculty dormitories, two of which have been contracted. Hopefully, these initiatives will meet the growing housing demand of new faculty members. As new faculty are required to work toward promotion, the Office is tasked to ease their housing burden so they can better focus on their research. NTU currently has the facilities to accommodate 1,000 faculty members, with 200 city-center units reserved exclusively for new recruits for up to five years.

The Zhubei Campus project is another focus of the Office of General Affairs. The campus gate is prioritized for completion this year, as well as the planning of NTUTEC. As an industry-university cooperation facility, it draws design inspiration from Cornell Tech. Finally, the design of Centennial Memorial Museum was awarded to the well-known, innovative Japanese architect, Hirata Akihisa, following an international competition.

Students are highly concerned about the impact of the university’s major infrastructure projects, as they might alter the campus environment and materially affect the students’ daily activities. Sensitive to such concerns, Prof. Wen-Cheng Liao affirms that NTU has set up effective channels for the exchange of opinions. During the third week of every month, the President holds a meeting with the student union, student representatives, and graduate student association. The meeting also invites senior administrators, such as the Chief Secretary as well as Vice Presidents for Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, and General Affairs to attend. The campus is a shared space, so differences are inevitable and take time and effort to reconcile, but the Office of General Affairs will strive to listen to all parties. Combining the expertise of the Office of Campus Planning and other committees, Prof. Liao affirms that workable, satisfactory solutions can be reached within the scope of the law.