Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles held the 2018 Joint Conference for Taiwanese Student Associations on September 29. Over 50 Presidents and staff from 16 universities’ Taiwanese Students Associations (TSA), including representatives of University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, all five campuses of the University of California, California State University Fullerton, Long Beach and San Diego State University, California Institute of Technology, Claremont Graduate University, Pepperdine University and University of Southern California, all joined the conference.
Director Rebecca Lan of Education Division made an opening remark to welcome all students and Consular Affairs Division, Technology Division, Taiwan Academy, Technology Division and Immigration Division introduced their functions and useful resources related to students. Education Division also edited a practical handbook for guiding students how to organize activities or apply for relevant subsidies and scholarships, advocating the importance of safety and health when studying abroad, especially in this era when natural disasters, internet or telephone fraud and shooting are rampant.
The conference, which is sponsored by the Ministry of Education each year, served as a platform for the attendees to exchange ideas and experiences concerning how to run the student associations and render better service to their members. All of the representatives enthusiastically introduced the operation of their associations as well as different activities they plan to organize for enhancing relations among Taiwanese students; promoting Taiwanese culture and helping each other adapt themselves to American culture and life.
In the afternoon, Career Taiwan USA Association, which is a volunteer group aiming to help Taiwanese students find jobs and set their root in USA, was invited to introduce their founding background and missions. They offer mentoring programs and seminars related to applying for jobs, visa regulations in USA and how to enhance job seeking skills. Career Taiwan USA collaborates with major successful businesses in the Southern California to help Taiwanese students to obtain internship opportunity. They organize entrepreneurship field trips such as Solar Max, Diamond Wipe, Taboola, and Panda Express and also sponsor TSAs to hold similar events and activities at campus. The association is built to support young people from Taiwan to pursue their American Dreams.
Then two keynote speeches by V.P. Ning Ning Yu of Taboola and Membership Director Lien Chen of the Taiwanese American Professionals inspired students with their successful career and life in USA. Taboola is the leading discovery platform, serving over 450 billion recommendations of articles, videos, products and apps to over one billion unique users every month on thousands of premium sites and mobile carriers. Ning Ning Yu first played the song “Granted” by Josh Groban to inspire students to chase their dreams and delivered a speech “Access, Prepare and Go”. She encouraged students to participate in job fairs, seek for internship as soon as possible and enhance key hard and soft skills like idea/knowledge, skill/technology, passion, perseverance, integrity, communication, friendship and being helpful. She also pointed out the importance of having visions: the art of seeing what is invisible to others. In order to cultivate visions, students should be curious about everything and read more international news every day. Then she introduced three concepts: Purpose (the desire to serve something bigger than ourselves), Mastery (the desire to get better at something that matters) and Autonomy (the desire to direct our lives). She told students it is never too late to love what they do and figure out what they want to be and asked them to think about what is their core value and what brings them happiness. Only by listening to their hearts can they be motivated to find their long-lasting career life. She also introduced the top 5 factors in success across more than 200 companies: timing, team/execution, idea “truth” outlier, business model and funding and her speech ended with her encouragement for students to build up their networking and broadening their vision.
The second keynote speaker Lien Chen delivered a speech “Cross Cultural Communication”. She compared Taiwan and USA through Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory: power distance index, individualism vs. collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, long term orientation vs. short term orientation and indulgence vs. restraint. She pointed out the biggest differences between the two countries are individuality (Taiwan 17 vs. US 91), and long term orientation (Taiwan 93 vs. US 26).That is, Taiwan is a collectivist society with hierarchal culture while USA stresses individualism and Taiwan is a society where people attempt to make life as predictable and controllable while USA is the one where people are more relaxed, open or inclusive. Her speech inspired students how to adapt themselves to the American society and reflect on how to build successful cross cultural communication.
It is believed that all of the participants benefit a lot from the conference and have more ideas about how to pave the way for their future career and life and become successful leaders.