Brief History
The College of Liberal Arts is the oldest academic division of Tamkang University. Founded in 1966 and expanded from the Department of Chinese which was established in 1956, the College is currently composed of five departments, one graduate institute and one center: the Departments of Chinese, History, Information and Library Science, Mass Communication, Information and Communication, the Graduate Institute of Chinese Linguistics and Documentation and the Center for China Studies. All of this is divided into two academic traditions: the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Features
The first feature of the College: A learning environment integrating Social Sciences with Humanities
Integrating Social Science traditions with that of the Humanities is the first feature of the College, which also constitutes an academic environment blending Western scientific essence and Eastern philosophy. Under the foundations of the “Triple Objectives” of the University: Globalization, Information-oriented Education, and Future –Oriented Education, the College has formed a blending of Eastern and Western knowledge, culture, innovation, and communication. This feature and vantage is concretely reflected in the Center for China Studies and the relevant tasks for the Center for Knowledge Communication and Cultural Creativity, which is currently under development.
The second feature of the college: the Center for China Studies—A chief academic center for the International China Studies
The Center for China Studies contains 12 remarkable research stations focusing on oriental culture. The fruitful research achievements of the Center has not only made the College a chief research center for International China Studies, but also an academic pivot of interaction and dialogues among Oriental culture studies within Asia. Moreover, the plentiful cultural source materials collected, sorted and stored in the Center has turned into substantial resource for developing contemporary global Chinese Language-Based cultural creativity industry.
The third feature of the College: the Center for Knowledge Communication and Cultural Creativity—Fostering talented personnel for the cultural creativity industry
Our five departments and a Graduate Institute happen to make up the core for the Chinese Language-Based cultural creativity industry, i.e. accumulation, application and reproduction of Chinese culture. Thus, the Center for Knowledge Communication and Cultural Creativity including several Labs on information, communication and marketing has proved to be not only a fertile ground for cultivating fashionable designers and teams of cultural creativity, but also an overall driving force for “creative teaching, research development and collaboration between industry and academic fields,” and additionally demonstrating the actual capacity of an academic institution in practice.
Future Development
The features of future development of the College:
The unique positioning of “oriental views, global vision, international connections and creativity innovation” represented in the stimulating reciprocity of the two centers will be the most significant direction and target for the future development of the College.
Therefore, in the aspect of instructional design, we emphasize not only full development of the students’ in-depth understanding of their subject areas, but also ample enhancement of their powers of observation and practical intelligence in real social contexts. Furthermore, we train our students to be both sophisticated in finding methods of practice from theories and in generalizing theories from experiences. It is also our expectation that the two programs of Knowledge Communication and Cultural Creativity offered by the College will nourish our students with a wider scope, so they are able to enter into either academic or other areas.
As to the academic research, we put emphasis on establishing collaboration and interaction between the Center for China Studies and the Center for Knowledge Communication and Cultural Creativity. Moreover, we encourage interdisciplinary integrated research teamwork and college-based lectures on special topics to cultivate a unique, well-balanced, mutually inspiring academic climate that combines the two academic traditions of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Motto and Goals
Above all,“Oriental views, global vision, international connections and creativity innovation” are the unique positioning and feature of development for the College. These are also deeply rooted in, assimilated from and extended from the triple objectives of our university. The characteristic of the College that combines both Western Social Sciences and Eastern Humanities and Philosophies provides an arena of cultural practice in the contemporary space-time environment in which Western and the Eastern civilization are enmeshed. In addition, among the multiple relationships of "localization, regionalization, internationalization, and globalization," the compatible and comprehensive knowledge incorporating "oriental culture and local thinking" along with the "international positioning and global vision" also offer the utmost strategically theoretical foundation and cultural base for Taiwan.