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New
council line-up
Sir Gordon Wu, Chairman of Hopewell Holdings Limited,
has been appointed Chairman of Council for a period of three years. Mr
S M Chung, formerly Treasurer, has become Deputy Chairman, while
Mr Raymond Or Ching-fai, General Manager of HSBC, has
taken up the Treasurer's post. All appointments are effective 1 January
2004.
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| New
heads
Dr Joseph K F Kwok, Assoc Prof (SS), and Dr Zhu
Guobin, Assoc Prof (SLW), have been appointed, respectively,
Director of the Admissions Office (ADMO) and Director of the External
Liaison and Cooperation Office (ELCO, previously the Academic Exchange
Office). Both appointments are initially for one year, effective 1 January
2004.
The importance of the two
offices, President Prof H K Chang said in an announcement
at the end of December, should be understood in the context of the intentions
of the UGC and its funded institutions to find ways "to broaden the
admission criteria to take into consideration the non-academic achievements
of students, and to expand the intake quota of non-local students to support
the wider role of the local higher education sector in China and in Asia."
While the Admissions Office is expected to take the lead in improving
the quality of our student intake, the ELCO will be an active agent in
exploring more opportunities on the Mainland and overseas for student
exchanges, joint teaching programmes, short-term training programmes and
joint research and development work.
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| Faculty
giving
The University, through the Development and Alumni Relations Office (DAO),
has launched a "staff giving campaign" just before the New Year.
Under the scheme, staff are encouraged to donate, on a voluntary basis,
any amount to support the future development of the University. The University
has secured pledges from three outside donors who will each give 50 cents
to every dollar staff gives for a total of HK$2.5. When this sum is reported
to the UGC under the Matching Grant Scheme, it will become HK$5. In a
message to all staff before Christmas, Prof H K Chang,
the President, said, depending on the financial situation of individual
staff members, "a single-digit donation is not too little, while
a seven-digit figure is not too much." He said he would very much
like to see the faculty giving campaign reach an internal target of HK$2
million by 30 June 2004.
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| AD
Final Report
The
Council's Working Group on Associate Degree Programmes, chaired by Mr
S M Chung, met on 18 December, after seeking legal advice on
whether the University has the right to change superannuation terms of
employment into contracts. This clarification was needed as, at the eleventh
hour before the submission of the Report to the Council in late November,
staff representatives raised a legal issue with the University over superannuable
terms. The Working Group, it is believed, will submit the Report with
its major recommendations intact to a special Council meeting in January
2004.
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| Chinese
web pages
The University's homepage (www.ncm2.xyz)
will add a Chinese version, starting soon. Dr Jerry Yu,
CIO, intends to provide, in a systematic and consistent presentation,
more Chinese web pages, moving from the central to the departmental homepages.
Approved by the Committee on Information Services and Technology (CIST),
departments will be asked to provide Chinese web versions, in accordance
with specified guidelines. It is hoped that a complete University Chinese
website will be available by the start of the 2004-05 academic year.
In addition, the University
will adopt a single, unified e-learning platform, effective 2005-06 academic
year. A small core group, comprising Dr Yu, Prof Doug Vogel (IS),
Dr Jonathan Webster (CTL) and Maria Chin (ESU),
will conduct a wide consultation to collect users' comments before drawing
up specifications. A tendering process will follow to select the common
platform package. Further information on both items can be found at the
CIST website (www.ncm2.xyz/cio/cist).
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Software
asset management
The University will conduct its second software asset management exercise
in the next six to 9 months, in compliance with requirements under the
Intellectual Property Ordinance. The first exercise was conducted in early
2003. Departments are responsible for maintaining their software asset
and license information. The Internal Audit Unit will include software
asset assessment as part of its normal audit process.
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| Kudos
Dr Moez Limayem,
Assoc Prof (IS), Christy Cheung and Gloria Chan,
research students at IS, received the prestigious Best Paper Award for
their work, "Explaining IS Adoption and Post-Adoption: Towards an
Integrative Model," at the International Conference on Information
Systems (ICIS) at Seattle, 14-17 December 2003.
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More
Kudos
Hamlet Lin Yiu-bong and Chan Tze-him,
year 3 and year 2 students respectively in the School of Creative Media,
won the Championship and First Runner-up prizes, out of 49 entries, in
the Radio Television of Hong Kong Putonghua Festival Short Movie Contest.
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Lectures
Donald D Stone, Professor of English, City University
of New York, will deliver a lecture, "The Roar that Lies on the Other
Side of Silence: Hong lou meng, Middlemarch, and Other Masterpieces of
Narrative Fiction", 4:30 pm, 14 January, at Library Seminar Room
2, Run Run Shaw Library. A simple ceremony, held at the Library lobby,
celebrating Prof Stone's donation of Western art books, will precede the
lecture.
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