Curriculum

A minimum of 128 credit hours should be gained to meet the graduation requirement :

1. Core Courses: 45 credit hours
2. Elective Professional Courses: 26 credit hours
3. College’s Core Curriculum: 9 credit hours
4. University’s Core Curriculum: 24 credit hours
5. Student Service Education and Mentor's Hours: 4 credit hours
6. Other Elective Courses: 22 credit hours

The Graduate Program emphasizes understanding ethnic identity as a progressive and prospective concept. Ethnic studies do not merely construct abstract theories; students should examine the political and economic factors underlying the ethnic identity construction to understand how ethnicity in the sense of reformation stimulates multicultural elements, the latter becoming the basis of cultural innovation during social practice.

On the other hand, the program offers foundation courses on theories and research methods of sociology and anthropology, as well as various theory courses on ethnicity, multi-culturalism, nationalism, and cultural studies, so that students could understand the socio-cultural background of ethnic identity construction.

The program also offers advanced courses on key topics of ethnicity and cross-disciplinary multicultural fields, the latter including history, ecology, economy, tourism, gender, community, clan, literature, and cultural industry.

1. Core courses comprise 14 credit hours of the program, including three semesters of Seminar on Ethnicity and Culture (0 credits). Students should register for the courses according to the scheduled course timetable. They can only register for Thesis Research (I) (II) after choosing their academic advisors. If a student cannot perform his/her course registration as scheduled due to unforeseen circumstances, they may do so with the approval of the Head of Department.
2. A minimum of 16 credit hours should be attained from the elective courses, including 3 credit hours from courses not taught by the department’s full-time professors.
3. Students should seek their academic advisor’s advice and get his/her approval before registering for the courses. Before deciding who will be their academic advisors, the department will assign a full-time professor or a jointly-appointed professor to act as the students’ tutor and advise them on their course registration plans.
4. Students who wish to register for the other university’s courses should ensure that NYCU does not offer similar courses and that the external courses registered must not exceed 6 credit hours or two courses per semester. In addition, the total credits of external courses must not exceed one-third of the total credits required for graduation. Should there be any special cases, students should get the approval from the department.

NYCU aims to encourage students to engage in cross-disciplinary, in-depth learning and cultivate a second specialization among them. Hence, the University proposes a “cross-disciplinary program” inspired by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)’s BxA Intercollege Degree Program and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s course modules and hybrid learning.

The “cross-disciplinary program” is modified from fundamental principles and allows students to complete their degree by registering cross-disciplinary course modules (BxA) from their major department and a second specialization department or college without extending the duration of study nor significantly increasing the number of credits. The University will indicate the students’ cross-disciplinary specialization on their graduation certificates.

The department will organize a briefing session on the cross-disciplinary program in the Spring semester each year. The application period will be announced by the department in advance, and the announcement will specify the documents required for application as well as the enrolment quota of that year.

Applications received will be reviewed by the major and the second specialization departments. The review period falls from late April to mid-May each year, whereby the first stage starts in the second week of April. The review results will be sent to the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning Development and released around May.

The educational goal of the department is to cultivate students with literacy in humanities and social sciences, besides choosing “ethnicity” as a field of knowledge cultivation. We emphasize research methods of social sciences and humanities and explore the positions of “nations”, “ethnicity” and “locality” – especially the ethnicity phenomena in Taiwan – in the trend of globalization, thus trying to understand how to carry out local knowledge in practice in the recent world. The latter is the most crucial debate of society today – it is also where the tension of political ethics exists when facing globalization.

The fundamental training provided by the department aims to guide students in understanding Taiwan’s position in globalization by examining the political tension, thus providing them with a reference structure for discovering their self-positioning. Advanced practical and research courses are available after students complete the fundamental academic training. In short, fundamental courses cultivate students’ ability to master the comprehensive social images and position themselves in globalization; in contrast, advanced courses cultivate students’ ability to create and innovate in the cultural industries, with the hope that they can further develop their skills and more possibilities with localization and ethnicity as their niches to face the up-to-trend globalization.

Advisor for Cross-disciplinary Program :
Asst Prof Hua-hsuan Chu
(Extension: 58710, Email：hchu@nycu.edu.tw)