Education Division of TECO in Canada Hosts Taiwan Scholarship Winner
Gabriel Lafond-Wise from Canada was awarded a Taiwan Scholarship this year and he has been admitted to the Global Master’s in Business Administration (GMBA) program at National Taiwan University. He visited the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada on September 10 and met with Tracy Lang, the Executive Director of the Education Division to discuss his planned studies in Taiwan and practical Taiwan Scholarship related details.
Gabriel’s decision to undertake graduate degree studies in Taiwan was motivated by his passion for Chinese culture and a desire to take his Chinese language skills to a higher level. The GMBA program at NTU is taught entirely in English; but he plans to immerse himself in the local environment while he’s living in Taipei. He visited Taiwan in 2015 and fell in love with its people, its landscapes, and its food!
He’s currently living in Yellowknife, in Canada’s high-latitude Northwest Territories where he’s been working in the field of economic development for remote Arctic communities and he’s still involved in delivering COVID-19 economic relief programs to vulnerable northern communities in Canada. Gabriel explained that he was initially going to begin his GMBA program in September 2020 but he wants to continue this important work on the economic relief programs which are scheduled to end in the approaching winter. For this reason, he requested delaying both his admission into the GMBA program and the start of his Taiwan Scholarship until February 2021.
His master’s degree program at National Taiwan University allows spring admission and the Ministry of Education gave him approval to begin his Taiwan Scholarship then. He hopes to be able to incorporate his experiences in Canada’s far north into his studies and develop his master’s thesis for the GMBA program on an Arctic-East Asian affairs subject.