Communications Matter – HKU Continues its Community Engagement
A new round of engagement exercise on the Centennial Campus has just been started in November 2007. This demonstrates the commitment of the University in ensuring an open and transparent process for its campus development.
"Public engagement" has been the buzzword in Hong Kong for the past few years, but consulting the public for campus development is still uncommon for local tertiary institutions. Right from the beginning of the planning process of the Centennial Campus, HKU has been actively involving all internal and external stakeholders. This round of engagement exercise marks our fourth attempt in reaching out and discussing issues with stakeholders since late 2005.
Two discussion sessions for HKU staff and students were held in November 2007 and the responses were encouraging. Attendants were impressed by the presentation on the design progress (See “Centennial Campus Design Makes Good Progress” of this newsletter) by Professor John Malpas, HKU Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Mr Lam Wo-hei the project architect. Interesting and challenging questions were raised, ranging from the future use of the heritage buildings to the availability of canteens and carparks on the new campus.
Our vision is to build not only a new campus, but a University District which fosters harmony and integration between the community and the university, and input from the community is indispensable during the process.
In early 2008, we will reach out to the community again and seek views from the District Council, green and heritage groups, residents and other interested parties on our design. Partnership with the community is essential and our engagement process will continue until 2012 and beyond.
Alumni show keen interest in Centennial Campus
At an Alumni Leaders gathering in December with over 70 representatives of alumni groups and classes, Professor John Malpas, Pro-Vice-Chancellor shared his vision of the future Centennial Campus, to be completed in 2011/2012.
"The Times Higher Education Supplement announced its rankings of the world's top universities for 2007 and HKU was ranked at number 18 globally. However, in terms of campus space and environment, we would undoubtedly rank much lower. I very much hope that after building the Centennial Campus, our alumni will be able to take pride in the state-of-the-art campus of their alma mater.” said Professor Malpas.
Models of the new campus, as well as the Lecture Centre and Learning Commons were displayed during the dinner.
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