Taiwanese scholar wants to go to PH for first farming PhD programme

DSG | Taiwanese scholar wants to go to PH for first farming PhD programme | MANILA – Professor Normalyn Longay, who won a Taiwanese scholarship, wants to start the country’s first doctorate programme in agriculture when she finishes her three years of postgraduate study in Taichung.

Longay is currently teaching at Benguet State University. Next month, she will start getting her Ph.D. in agriculture at Taiwan’s National Chung Hsing University after being chosen for a grant.

“I was thinking about getting my PhD in Taiwan because I like how good the schooling is there. Second, because it has a lot of different kinds of people. I’ll go back to Benguet State University when I’m done there. “I’ll pay back, for sure,” she told reporters at the Makati City event where scholarships were given out.

Longay said that at the moment, no university in the Philippines gives a PhD in Agribusiness.

“That’s one of my plans, and it would be the first time that’s happened in the country. She said, “It’s my dream.”

“This is what our farmers should be taught, and I think it should start with the young, with kids while they are still in school. You really have to change your mind and realise that there is also money in farming,” she said.

Longay is one of the 70 students from the Philippines who will fly to Taiwan this year to study at a graduate level.

18 of them got scholarships from the Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE), 7 from the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF), and 45 from the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship to learn Mandarin.

At the ceremony, Wallace Chow, who works for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in the Philippines, talked about how he hopes to send more Filipino scholars in the future and how he might work with top universities in the Philippines in fields like electronics, artificial intelligence (AI), and semiconductors.

Silvestre Bello III, who works for the Manila Economic and Cultural Office, told the students that they could be the “bond” that makes the friendship between Taiwanese and Filipino people even stronger.

“Once you finish your scholarship programmes, you will now act as ambassadors of goodwill for the Philippines to strengthen and deepen the friendships between our two peoples,” he said. (via PNA)