In March, 2018, the President of Ming Chi University of Technology, Dr. Thu-Hua Liu, had led a delegation of school academic and administrative executives to pay a visit to Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, after receiving the formal invitation from Prof. Dr. Herri SE, MBA, the coordinator of LL Dikti Wilayah X. During the visit, the delegation of MCUT, being the only Taiwanese university invited, not only obtained a rare opportunity to present an extensive school introduction to over 100 representatives from colleges and universities in the region, but also signed the agreement with LL Dikti Wilayah X as well as 75 Indonesian higher educational schools attending the ceremony on that day. As a friendly gesture to return the favor, President Liu invited a group of Indonesian rectors from around 20 universities delegated by Prof. Herri to visit Taiwan for one week in November in the same year, especially Ming Chi University of Technology. Without doubt, the visiting itinerary for such an honorable delegation were carefully arranged, including on-campus visits to a variety of MCUT departments and research centers, courtesy calls to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Education, R.O.C. as well as industrial trips to The FPG LOHAS Region in Taoyuan City. The highlight of this seven-day visit, of course, was the 2018 Taiwan-Indonesia Higher Vocational Education Presidents’ Forum held at MCUT.

As the grand beginning of the forum, the Deputy Counselor of Ministry of Education, R. O. C., Dr. Chia-Ling Chang, presented opening remarks to welcome the distinguished guest from Indonesia. In addition, she also acted as one of the keynote speakers along with Prof. Herri, both demonstrating the features of higher vocational education in the respective countries and showing the possibilities of achieving multiple types of collaborations in the future. On the afternoon of the forum, a special panel session was planned, on the topic of the roles of universities in enhancing social and economic improvements with 6 university presidents from Taiwan and Indonesia in total as speakers to share and exchange practical ideas to create more values from higher vocational education. The panel was further followed by a joint MoU-signing ceremony between seventeen Taiwanese universities and LL Dikti Wilayah X, showing great prospect of enormous cooperative academic and research projects following afterwards.

The back-to-back mutual visits in 2018 between MCUT and LL Dikti Wilayah X have paved a solid and long-term collaborative foundation for the two sides. As the most important and loyal academic and research partner to each other, both MCUT and LL Dikti Wilayah X expect to go further beyond merely bilateral cooperation and elevate this good interaction to a higher level of involving more governmental and educational partners. Hand in hand, a better future of collaboration between the two countries can be easily foreseen.