Episode 193-Leading First-Year Initiatives in Taiwan with Chuan-Chin Chiao and Sindy Peng
Chuan-Chin Chiao obtained his PhD from University of Maryland in 2000, and finished his postdoctoral training in Harvard University in 2002. He joined Department of Life Science, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan, in 2002, and is currently a Tsing Hua Distinguished Professor in this department. He is interested in a variety of vision related topics, including retinal neurobiology and cephalopod neuroethology. Multidisciplinary approaches are undertaken in the lab to seek deep understanding of vision in the context of biology. In addition to research, he is passionate about teaching. He has won the Best Lecturer Awards for three times from NTHU. In 2020, he has also obtained the Best General Education Teacher Award from Ministry of Education in Taiwan. He has produced three MOOCs and several OCW online courses. He has served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs in NTHU in 2020-2021. In 2021-2025, he served as the Director General of National Museum of Natural Science, the largest science museum in Taiwan. In February 2025, he returned to NTHU and continued his research and teaching. Particularly, he helped to advocate the First Year Experience movement in Taiwan, and served as Advisory Consultant at the Center for Exploration and Life Transitions (equivalent to the FYE office) in NTHU. He has taught the First Year Seminar course since fall 2025. Most recently, he has helped to organize the first Taiwan-FYE conference in NTHU.
Dr. Hsinyi (Sindy) Peng holds a B.A. in Chinese Literature from National Taiwan Normal University and a Ph.D. in Information Science and Learning Technologies from the University of Missouri.
Her career spans K–12 teaching, teacher education, and higher education. She began her career as a Chinese teacher in Taipei and later served as an assistant professor at National Chiao Tung University. She also spends a decade in the United States raising her two daughters—an experience that deeply shapes her perspective on life transitions, identity, and the challenges of restarting a career. During that time, she continued teaching as an online instructor with Oregon State University.
Now based at National Tsing Hua University, Sindy works at the intersection of student development, learning design, and higher education innovation. In May 2025, she founded the Center for Exploration and Life Transitions (ExALT), where she leads efforts to support first-year students in exploring their academic and life paths, develops first-year seminars with faculty across disciplines, and trains peer leaders to guide new students. She also organizes Taiwan’s first national conference on first-year education, The 1st Annual Conference of the Taiwan First-Year Experience (T-FYE), in collaboration with Prof. Chuan-Chin Chiao and Prof. Ming-Chi Wu.
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