Linak-Kuang “Kevin” Chen and I-Chen “Jessica” Hsu are the first two visiting scholars at UOG under the new bilingual exchange program.

Kevin Chen holds doctoral and master’s degrees from Ohio University while Hsu has a doctorate in Applied Chinese from Ming Chuan University in Taiwan.

"This collaboration helps the university community in a number of ways," said Senior Vice President and Provost Anita Borja Enriquez. "It offers students another option to get ahead in the workforce with Mandarin being a high-demand language, and it adds another way for us to provide international experiences for UOG students."

The program was launched following a 2021 memorandum of understanding between UOG, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, and National Taiwan Normal University.

Initially set for five years, the program also hopes to send 20 students from UOG to Taiwan so they could learn Mandarin starting next summer, said Kuan-Ju Chen, UOG assistant professor of agricultural economics.

The program is a collaboration that includes Anita Borja Enriquez, UOG senior vice president and provost; Carlos R. Taitano, director of Global Learning & Engagement; Paul Chen, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Guam; the Ministry of Education in Taiwan; and Kuan-Ju Chen and Jeng-Hung Liu, senior and associate liaison of the Asia Pacific Universities Consortium, respectively.

For more information, contact Kuan-Ju Chen at chenkj@triton.uog.edu.