measures educational institutions and employers can take to attract and retain female engineers. Individuals and groups wishing to participate in the committee’s work may do so by contacting the Canadian Committee on Women in Engineering, c/o Faculty of Engineering, NB, Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3.

Calendar

Gender Issues Brown Bag Luncheon - Please note room change - Soc/Anthropology lounge. Friday October 26 at 12:30 pm.

Quote of the week:

Stop Violence Against Women!

Professor Focus

By Kheng-Wee

Hung-Min Chiang, Associate Professor of Psychology

Professor Chiang is from a county in Taiwan called Hsin Chu. (Taiwan is basically on the other side of the Earth). Like all Chinese names, Hsin Chu has a meaning - "new bamboo", and true to its name, the county is indeed surrounded by bamboos. Since we were talking about names and their meanings, I asked him what his name means. "I don’t know what its precise meaning is, but I think it means people with broad minds,” he explained.

To understand Professor Chiang better is to know more about his background. Therefore | started by asking about his university life back in Taiwan. "I went to the National Taiwan University. The difference between the universities there and the universities here is that it is more flexible here," he said; "over here, students are allow to take elective courses but in Taiwan, the whole educational system was so rigid at my time that there were no electives. With this in mind, the pressure applied to the students there were much greater! Students were very serious about their studies. This was also partly because every single students accepted by the universities were the results of a very strict entrance examination. I started my university with chemistry and

later, I discovered that I didn’t want to work in the chemistry area, but it was too late for me to change because the government wouldn’t allow us to change our area of study. So I carried on and finished my degree in chemistry. After my degree, I went to the States. I went to Saint Joseph's College for further studies in chemistry because I was on a chemistry Scholarship. Nevertheless, | decided to switch to psychology after one year. My parents disapproved of my plans, but my mind was made. I was accepted at a college in the suburb of Philadelphia called Bryn Mawr College. There I started my study right from the very beginning until I received my Master degree. 1 didn’t stop my education there. I went on to take my Ph.D. at Brandeis. My Ph.D. enables me to teach in universities, and | have always wanted to be a teacher. It was my childhood dream."

Although the pressures were great, he still found time to relax. By relaxing, he did not mean partying or drinking. “To have 4 good past-time back there, I remember we did lots of outings during the weekends. You must know that we went to school there six days a week, we had to go to school on Saturdays. Sundays were the only days off, and we often went climbing the mountains and have picnics there. That's our past-times as 4 whole class. Whenever we went out, we went out as a class. Here, the students are rather different, they are more individualistic. They have their own friends.”

The UPEI X-Press

October 25, 1990

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