2023.04.26

Former President of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan Shu Frank Hsia-San (徐遐生) recently passed away in the United States, sending a wave of grief across the campus. NTHU President W. John Kao (高為元) announced that a memorial service will be held on campus at a later date.

 

Shu was the president from 2002 to 2006, following in the footsteps of his father, Shu Shien-siu (徐賢修), who was the president of NTHU from 1970 to 1975. Both have had a major impact on the development and history of NTHU.
 

Former NTHU president Hocheng Hong (賀陳弘) once said that one of Shu's greatest contributions was to question the practices of admitting students on the basis of a single exam and requiring students to declare a major at the time of matriculation, with little possibility of changing majors later on.

 

Hong said that it was Shu's concerns about these issues that led NTHU to establish the Star Program, which admits students from rural areas based on their grades in high school, a provision which has since been adopted throughout Taiwan. In addition, NTHU has also established an undergraduate interdisciplinary program which allows new students to defer declaring a major until their sophomore year. Other innovations inspired by Shu include interdisciplinary studies, dual specialization, and the Individualized Education Plan, all of which have had a major impact on higher education in Taiwan.

 

Shu was the second NTHU president to be hired from abroad, the first of whom was Liu Chung-laung (劉炯朗). Shu grew up in the United States, and many remember how at the beginning of his tenure he could hardly speak a complete sentence in Chinese and that his written Chinese needed a lot of editing. However, he was very much a people person, and before long he became fluent enough to make jokes in Chinese. Shu is also remembered for his easy-going and gentlemanly demeanor.

 

After stepping down as president in 2006, Shu continued to lecture at NTHU and maintained close ties with teachers and students alike. He was also concerned about climate change and global warming, and facilitated research in environmental protection and alternative energy. He also served as a member of the Academic Affairs Committee until 2019, in which capacity he made many valuable suggestions.

 

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served for a time as chair of the Department of Astronomy; he was also president of the American Astronomical Society. At the age of 21, he published a groundbreaking paper on density wave models, using mechanical principles to explain the impact of vortex arms on spiral galaxies.

 

Senior vice president Chien Chen-fu (簡禎富) said that Shu was a talented administrator who secured NTHU's place on the international stage, while also continuing his own research in astronomy, for which he won a number of international awards. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

 

Shu's appointment as president of NTHU attracted the attention of the academic community, and the top international journals Nature and Science reported that his appointment was sure to have a far-reaching impact on the development of higher education in Taiwan.