USI Education Foundation was established on December 30, 2011 with donations from USI and APC. The foundation officially started operations in 2012 to promote educational charitable affairs, with focus on the education for the vulnerable and the rural and the care for environmental protection. The foundation advances its goals by establishing scholarships and grants, donating to charities, and sponsoring educational and charitable activities to enhance the energy and efficiency of service.

We offer scholarships to students from low-income families with outstanding performance and specializing in disciplines relating to chemical engineering, materials science, and applied chemistry of 13 public and private universities to promote education and talent cultivation in related fields, encourage university students of related disciplines to study hard and cultivate outstanding industrial talents for society. Over the last nine years, we have accumulatively granted scholarships amounting to NT$11.1 million to 236 students.

In 2020, we offered scholarships and grants totaling NT$1.5 million to 30 students from 16 departments of 12 public and private universities, including 3 from doctoral programs, 19 from master’s programs, and 8 undergraduates, and 26 of them were from low-income families. On December 11, 2020, we held the scholarship presentation ceremony and citation lunch to encourage and develop more outstanding students from low-income families, hoping that they will demonstrate positive influence in society in the future.

To encourage college and university clubs to provide educational services for the disadvantaged, in remote areas, and about environmental protection, the USI Education Foundation sponsors clubs officially registered under colleges and universities.

The foundation sponsors a wide variety of educational services and activities, covering language, mathematics, naturel sciences, social studies, arts and culture, life counseling, physical exercise, character building, ICT, environmental education, and others. In doing so, we hope to provide more diversified education for the disadvantaged and those in the remote areas through high-quality club activities and human resources programs of colleges and universities.

In 2020, the foundation sponsored 53 activities from 27 schools out of 104 applications from 38 schools for a total sum of NT$500,000. Over the past nine years, the foundation has sponsored activities for a cumulative amount of NT$3.99 million, benefitting about 11,590 volunteers and 29,800 students as participants in or recipients of the club or college services. As the number of applications increases every year, sponsoring young students to engage in service-based club activities has become one long-standing goal.

To invest more resources in rural education and the sustainability of Hualien and Taitung, the foundation sponsors the Alliance Cultural Foundation and Junyi Experimental High School on a long-term basis. Chairman Stanley Yen of the Alliance Cultural Foundation hopes to provide economically vulnerable schoolchildren with an opportunity to flip through rural education reform and innovative experimental education implementation. Therefore, he has established the “Rural Education Seeds Cultivation Program” to sponsor economically vulnerable schoolchildren of Hualien and Taitung. So far, a total of 164 schoolchildren have been benefited, and 80% of them are indigenous peoples. In 2020, the Alliance expanded the Program to Pingtung for more rural children to enjoy education equity.

In 2017, the Alliance advocated the overseas study program and established the “Innovation and Overseas Study Education Fund” to provide scholarships for highly potential students of Junyi Experimental High School to apply for overseas study at two-year community colleges or the United World College before high school graduation like taking over others on the lane. Besides providing students with a new start to connect with the world, this program enables students to develop specialties and broaden their international view, so that they can become the power to change their communities and hometowns in the future. In 2020, the unexpected pandemic dimmed the student’s hope of overseas study. This year, one student from the third graduation class successfully applied for admission to the United World College. Due to the pandemic, another candidate deferred the admission to the Washington Community College to 2021. Since program establishment, 11 students have studied overseas under the program, six students from the first graduation class have successfully enrolled to their ideal universities or colleges to further their study, and two of them even earned the scholarship from US universities.

In response to its development concept, Junyi was transformed into an international experimental senior high school in 2019, and its “boarding international experimental school” education program was approved by the Ministry of Education. To provide education resources integrated with a boarding learning environment plays an important part in changing the scattered rural education resources. Either its long-standing “Life Exploration” course or pioneering experimental courses “Creativity Module” and “International Linkage” launched since 2017 were expanded into multidisciplinary courses. In 2020, the school started the “Self-Learning” course at the junior high-school department to equip students with the literacy for lifelong education and actively enforce the concept and value featuring “inspiring talent, positive innovation, local connection, and bilingual international,” in order to develop core competence in “character, life, and skill” in students.