The mountains, sea breezes, and humanistic atmosphere of Eastern Taiwan shape the unique vitality of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at National Dong Hwa University. Since our founding in 1995, we, standing on this land, have observed the flux of the world and paid attention to the subtle yet genuine voices of the local community. The value of the humanities and social sciences lies in their ability to lead us toward understanding people and relationships with greater gentleness and depth, and allows us to find new meaning in an era of immense change.

Starting from People: A Community of Mutual Achievement

Here, scholarship is not static knowledge recorded on pages, but a warmth co-created by teachers and students.
We believe that “mutual affirmation is the deepest power of an organization.” The humanities and social sciences take “people” as the scale and “relationships” as the starting point. Every faculty member and student supports one another here. As a result, the college becomes a home that embraces diverse perspectives and a place where different cultures, generations, and knowledge traditions meet.

Learning from the land: A Knowledge Path Starting from Hualien-Taitung

The mountains of Hualien and the Pacific Ocean remind us that knowledge is not detached from a place, but is symbiotic with the land.
Our college has long cared for rural areas, indigenous peoples, tribes, communities, and local cultural industries and transformed the stories of Eastern Taiwan into academic nourishment. Through public forums, social practice courses, and the compilation of local gazetteers, we connect student learning with local needs. Through visual media, literature and history, cultural governance, and policy analysis, our students are not just researchers, but witnesses to and participants in this land.

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Building Bridges Between Disciplines and the World

Contemporary society is changing rapidly; a single discipline can no longer respond to complex problems. Our college uses interdisciplinarity as a methodology to collaborate not only with science, engineering, arts, education, and management, but also to open new possibilities for dialogue between the humanities and technology. From AI micro-programs and cognitive social sciences to law, indigenous studies, cultural and creative industries, and Hualien Studies, we hope to empower students to navigate multiple knowledge worlds and understand the intertwining of technology and society through a humanistic lens.

Meeting the World: Bringing the Spirit of Dong Hwa to the Global Stage

At Dong Hwa, internationalization is not about imitating the world, but about engaging with it with our own rhythm and our own stories.
We actively establish partnerships with academic institutions across the Pacific, Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, allowing students to move, learn, and grow between different cultures. The inclusion of international students makes our classrooms a microcosm of cross-cultural dialogue and ensures our research and teaching pulse in sync with the world.

I often think that the value of the humanities and social sciences may not lie in providing immediate answers, but in this: it allows us to be willing to pause and reflect, to listen, and to understand one another.
Looking to the future of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, I hope it will be:

• a home that embraces diversity and difference;
• a place that holds space for reflection and imagination;
• a bridge that connects the land to the world; and
• a harbor where people can find their own direction.

May we coexist with the mountains and the sea; may knowledge possess warmth; and may every student and scholar find their own path here.