The Ministry of Education & the Minnesota Department of Education Sign a Memorandum of Understating on Educational Cooperation
In the last two years, a series of MOUs have been successively signed between the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the education authorities of various states in the United States, in order to expand the beneficial results of the signing of the U.S.–Taiwan Education Initiative in December 2020. These include a memorandum of understanding on educational cooperation entered into with the Minnesota Department of Education in the United States to strengthen bilateral exchanges. The Minnesota Department of Education is in charge of public schools at all levels from kindergarten to high school (K-12) in the state. It oversees more than 900,000 students and 136,000 education professionals.
With the assistance of the Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago, the MOU was signed by Dr. Yen-Yi Lee, Director General of the Department of International and Cross-strait Education of the MOE, and Dr. Heather Mueller, Minnesota Commissioner of Education, on December 16, 2022.
Educators in Minnesota have already enjoyed close interaction with Taiwan. Yinghua Academy in Minnesota, for example, has been actively recruiting Chinese language teachers from Taiwan to teach in the school’s language immersion programs, as well as working to help the school engage in cultural exchanges and other aspects of cooperation. These exchanges and other international cooperation contribute to expanding the American teachers and students’ understanding of foreign cultures and their global perspectives.
In the future, the MOE will establish an institutional cooperation platform with the Minnesota Department of Education to expand exchanges related to Chinese language education. This will include selecting fully qualified Chinese language teachers in Taiwan to teach in Minnesota’s primary and secondary schools, encouraging American students to study Chinese language in Taiwan, organizing short-term exchange visits for American teachers or students’ groups, and promoting school-to-school cooperation on bilingual instruction between individual schools in Minnesota and in Taiwan. These measures will further strengthen the educational links and cooperation between Taiwan and the United States.
