Top Women

Prof. Lucia Liu Severinghaus is a researcher at the Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica and an Adjunct Professor for the National Taiwan University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology center.  You can see that she is a person who loves nature, not to mention she was an honorary researcher at the Ornithological Society of the Americas! Thus, we were curious about the success factors of the Professor and her insights regarding.  So we decided to interview her, organize related data, and analyze the elements of success to accompany the results of our report. 

Interview time: January 5, 2012 17:00

  Prof. Lucia Liu Severinghaus is currently a researcher at the Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica and an Adjunct Professor at the National Taiwan University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Research Center. She also served as an Institute of Biology, Tunghai University Adjunct Associate Professor, a National Taipei University Resources Department Adjunct Associate Professor, chairman of the National Park Society, the Wild Bird Society president, and an honorary researcher at the Ornithological Society of the Americas.

Lucia is an authority of bird study in Taiwan and a pioneer in promoting conservation, but she had a unique school experience different than others. During university Lucia originally chose physics major, but under the guidance of her English teacher, she became interested in literature and transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages.  Later, she went to the United States to study her Master of Arts and Master of Environmental Education. Eventually, she became a Ph.D in wildlife.  Regarding this process, she described it as "the most important is interest." In this regard, her parents never thought that girls should study liberal arts.  At that time, Lucia's father only asked for certainty, but was still very surprised.  Lucia said, although my parents were not untraditional, but they did not say girls could not do this, could not do that.  Everything was according to our own interest.

In the circumstances of accompanying her husband to study abroad, Lucia had contact with many different areas of thinking.  And since Lucia's husband has always been very concerned about conservation, she learned a lot of environment related things from him.
In early years, environmental protection concepts were not valued by society.  She really wanted to try and protect the animals being indiscriminate killed. But because Lucia's "profession" was not in conservations, everyone ignored her. Teacher Lucia said: "With a degree, with a professional background, perhaps they would listen to me. So this is my main driving force, why I went back to school. "

The person that had most affected Lucia first was her father.  Her parents worked hard, and when the 5 children wanted to go to school, her parents never objected. Her father not only encouraged Lucia, but also punishment, because he has always been strict. Along the way, he asked the children do their best.  The second person that was important to Lucia was her husband.  He was always supportive and never complained; because he knew I was doing something I was interested in.

Lucia has never thought of gender restrictions. She has always used the most professional position to look at her work. Although there are some differences physically between men and women which are inconvenient, but I still feel that most of the problems are with the individual, and not related to gender.

Regarding her own interests, Lucia has always been very clear. She believes that if she does the most interested every day, she will not get sick of it. Even if she was tired, or frustrated, she will still motivate herself to study and not need someone else to force her, and will not care about how much time spent. So interest is definitely the motivation that brings oneself happiness during the learning process. Teacher think: discovering interest is not hard. Just feel it. If everyone has a legitimate, challenging interest that allows knowledge to grow, that allows you to pursue something, then I think it is great.

We learned from the experience of Prof. Severinghaus that she is not only curios, have the courage to challenge, and a motivated person, the teachers must be very seriously when doing something. Only this way did she get such amazing results in the study of birds. And she did not lack positivity, love, want of learning, and thinking characteristics. In addition, we believe that no matter what difficulties faced the teacher, she is full of thankfulness, steadfast determination, humility, self-confident and responsible attitude. Most importantly, the direction of the teachers struggle does not change. She has an extraordinary ambition and a passion for work.