Welcome NTNU Vice President Chen to visit Houston, Texas/Carlos Pueblo

 Welcome NTNU Vice President Chen to visit Houston, Texas/Carlos Pueblo

Our alumni association vice president informed me that NTNU Vice President Kwun-Min Chen would visit us in Houston one night on his way to College Station and Austin for school business. We would accommodate his vegetarian diet to treat him at the Sultan Pepper Mediterranean Restaurant inside the Memorial City Mall closed to his Westin Hotel nearby. It all went on smoothly as our association executives went to the airport to pick him up and I went to the mall to arrange seats for about 16 of us to welcome him. The restaurant also offers light meal such as chicken dishes in addition to the pure vegan menu which includes four salads.

We feel very closed to our Alma Mater NTNU, the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan. Last year, University President Chen-Chih Wu came to visit us and also treated us a very nice dinner box and fruits. This year his Vice President continued to visit us because of the universities academic agreement among Taiwanese Universities with two distinguished Texas Universities, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas. 

It's even more closed for me to think about it. Chen graduated from the Chemistry Department in 1982 while I did it 1n 1971. He went ahead to get his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to NTNU as a professor, department head, and the dean of the college of science, a perfect academic achievement and resume.

We all had the opportunity to chat with him that night. I ask him about the school direction since NTNU is no longer an university to train the secondary school teachers. He says that the chemistry department is very busy to prepare students to work for the famous TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It's been really amazing that 10 years before in 2014, I had a brief tour of the department at a new campus, the department head showed me how they accepted some jobs request to detect material preciously like to cover the applied chemistry fields. Now, the department goes on further ahead in the material science and electronic fields. I know that is amazing for the current days universities especially he National Universities in Taiwan.

I have had a good chat with him about our mutual teachers at NTNU. He says that the University likes to gather more about our past, the school life and our faculties. It's so nice to converse with a scholar to remember my university life nowadays.