It is the graduation season again when the students in the academic robe taking group pictures appear here and there on campus. While the students take pictures to preserve the treasurable memories at the last stage of their university life, Taipei Tech energizes these graduates with the inspiring stories of the distinguished and accomplished guests - Mr. Paul SL Peng and Dr. David Tai Hao Lu - as the graduation gift at the commencement. 

Paul SL Peng, Chairperson and CEO of AU Optronics Corporation, is also the alumni of Taipei Tech. Aside from being the CEO of a big enterprise, he can also be a licensed professional saxophone player surrounded by the crowds in the streets or a technology farmer who stands sweating amid the crops. On this special day, he was conferred with the honorary doctorate degree by his alma-mater Taipei Tech and gave a speech to all the graduates seated in the auditorium. 

“Graduation is just the beginning of your life,” said Peng. “We need to be faced with all the challenges passionately and courageously, and create our own slash careers.”

Peng graduated from Taipei Tech in 1979 and has been devoting himself to the technology industries for over three decades. Under his leadership, the AUO thrives again in profits through the implementation of the value transformation. As one of the founders of the Taiwan Display Union Association, he is successful in the integration of the optoelectronic industries. Peng also strives for the environmental sustainability and cultural protection, and thus was awarded the Outstanding Corporate Sustainability Professionals Award by the TCSA in 2018.

To cultivate the future talents, he spares no efforts in bridging the universities and the industries, offering the students abundant resources from the industries and the real business world, and opportunities to instill innovative initiatives from academia into the industries. The Gap of Learning and Field (GOLF) that he and the AUO are engaged in, for instance, is set to assemble the ideas and assure the bi-lateral communication can be carried out smoothly.

Peng is especially concerned about the development of his alma-mater, Taipei Tech, which has received his generous and steadfast commitments in all respects. Not only did he take the chief positions in the Taipei Tech Elite Union and the Alumni Association of Taipei Tech IEM, but he has also contributed to the accomplishment of numerous joint research projects, short- and long-term internships, scholarships, and lectures in the academia-industry cooperation framework. His devotion also includes the donations to the university funds, facilities, and equipment, and even signed the contract with Taipei Tech on the internship at the first and only LCD panel factory in Taiwan. 

An achieved business person as he looks like, Peng was actually originated from a farmer’s family and used to work as a shepherd boy and a construction worker. His expatriation for work to Malaysia for nine years and to China for four years along with the mission of the expansion of the AUO has turned this diamond in the rough into a piece of shining jewelry that attracts attention worldwide. It is the resilience and open mind of his that took all the challenges that confront him all the way. 

“Being an expat has trained me to open my mind, broaden my horizons, and get rid of the biases through immersing in a different culture,” said Peng, who stresses the importance of the global mobility and social concern.

David Tai Hao Lu gave a speech for the commencement in the afternoon on the topic, The Sword and the Sheath, depicting his life from a notorious gangster of Bamboo Union whose records had kept him in fourteen prisons, to a Christian pastor. He said that it is the faith and love that made him start anew. Later he was absorbed completely into learning, which got him the Ph.D. in education from the California International Theological Seminary, and the other one in philosophy from Peking University. Now an assiduous and humane pastor, he also works for the rehabilitation of the offenders and the school dropouts. 

Lu’s idea of life goes well with the one that President Wang has on Taipei Tech. With all Lu has experienced his life, he told the graduates seated in the hall that the moral quality (MQ) is of the same importance as the IQ and EQ. 

“Never fail to commit an act of kindness just because it is small in scale, and never commit an act of evil just because it is small in scale,” said Lu.