Establishment Objectives
The Institute of Journalism was established in 1991, with the objective of ‘cultivating advanced journalism talents to promote professional standard of news journalism’. When established, the Institute referred to the mission statement of Columbia’s Institute of Journalism; the institute focuses on advanced practical training. With regard to the fact that news journalist should have more than just skills, they should also be equipped with expertise and the ability to analyze issues; theory and practices cannot be separated. Therefore, the journalism education of this institute also places an importance on professional theory and expert intelligence implementation, emphasizing the integration of the two. The institute aims to ‘enhance journalism professionalism’, which is distinctive in the domestic development of journalism education. In Taiwan, the institute is the only one to offer advanced professional journalism education as our goal. The institute has clear positioning, different form others, and a special journalism education mission
Education Aims
Professional journalists have to include both journalism training and the ability to analyze news issues; also, in face of the ever and fast changing and diverse society and globalized environment, news workers should possess independent thinking, respect multicultural civic awareness, international outlook and professional knowledge, in order to become a news worker that is well-trained, caring and up to speed with global perspective and transition.
The 4 educational goals of the institute:
- Cultivate journalism techniques and knowledge.
- Independent thinking and respect multicultural civic awareness.
- Enhance global outlook.
- Strengthen academic expertise
The institute concentrates on the courses and research plans surrounding the integration of theory and practices, and the main practical concept of ‘learning by doing’. The aim obviously expanded bigger than the previous goal, under the education system in Taiwan, practical and theoretical aspects are included, providing richer course content such as developing journalism techniques and knowledge. Meanwhile, the institute is greatly different from other national journalism institutes in our goal to cultivate advanced practical talents and enhance professionalism. In terms of faculty, curriculum, student enrollments and examination, have all set a sound, well-grounded and unique system and methods.
Although the scale of the institute is small, we vigorously integrate resources from within and outside of NTU. Outside of NTU, we allow our students to take classes outside of NTU, for we have signed a program with other schools to let students choose electives there; from NTU, we encourage out students to make good use of NTU’s abundant academic resources and brilliant teachers, so as to make up for the limited full-time teachers in our institute. With the aid from NTU’s scientific, engineering, medical, law, commercial and agricultural academic environment, to fulfill our utmost value on practical education. At the same time, the institute actively searches for widespread practitioners from newspapers, magazine, T.V, and internet, accomplishing the employment of the remarkable tradition of “learning by doing”. In recent years, the institute has made efforts to develop international exchange, inviting oversea scholars to visit and holding workshops; we send our students abroad to take part in international exchange, also plan to take an extra step in creating closer partnerships with other international universities
Incorporate practical fields:
Recruit practitioners from news press, magazine publishers, T.V and the Internet, fulfilling the concept of ‘learning by doing’
Integrate off campus resources:
allow students to elect courses at other schools
signed with other schools to be allowed to take their electives
Integrate campus resources:
draw assistance from NTU’s scientific, engineering, medical, law, commercial and agricultural academic fields
Core Competencies
Under the 4 main goals of education, the institute offers related courses to cultivate the following core competencies:
Based on the goal to ‘cultivate journalism techniques and knowledge’, students should acquire a great ability in news writing, recognize the basics and functions of journalism, reflect on journalism ethics and have the power to analyze news issues.
According to ‘independent thinking and respect multicultural civic awareness’, students should be able to think independently and critically, care about public issues and respect different cultures and communities.
In line with the goal ‘enhance global outlook’ students should have global/local thinking, and can identify and analyze global development trends and their impact on local societies.
To ‘strengthen academic expertise’, students should develop professional knowledge of certain fields, to become a news worker who has basic news professionalism and areas of expertise, doing their best to report and interpret current increasing specialization phenomenon.