The University of Hong Kong

A message from The University of Hong Kong

Asia's Leading International University

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is Hong Kong's first tertiary institution, with a history that stretches back over a hundred years and ever since this beginning, HKU has been an outward-looking university. We continue to foster internationalisation through an open academic environment and aspirations to excellence and have sought out like-minded people from around the world.
 
HKU continue to attract the best performing students locally and top performers from the Mainland and overseas.

• HKU received 25,000 undergraduate applications for 2012 admissions from students across 96 countries.
• Enrolled students achieved the full scores from varies internationally recognised qualifications, this include 4*or above in their GCE Advanced Level Examination, and also full scores for IB and SAT.
• Our graduates are highly sought after and full employment has been recorded for the sixth consecutive year.

In addition, HKU maintain high quality of academic and research standards,

• In 2010-11, more than half of our professoriate staff came from overseas.
• 105 of our scientists were ranked among the top 1% in their field by the Institute for Scientific Information in 2011.
• HKU has also been the top recipient of the Research Grants Council's General Research Fund for 10 years in a row.

Curriculum
Our new Common Core Curriculum is designed to provide key common learning experience for all HKU students and to broaden their horizons beyond their chosen disciplinary fields of study. It focuses on issues that have been, and continue to be, of deeply profound significance to humankind, the core intellectual skills that all HKU undergraduates should acquire and the core values that they should uphold.

The University has 10 faculties, all of which offer undergraduate programmes. These are:

• Faculty of Architecture
• Faculty of Arts
• Faculty of Business and Economics
• Faculty of Dentistry
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Engineering
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Medicine
• Faculty of Science
• Faculty of Social Sciences

Learning Outside the Classroom
Each Faculty in HKU facilitates experiential learning projects for its students in Hong Kong and around the world. The University has partnered with companies, non-governmental organizations, social enterprises and universities around the world to give students chances to step outside the classroom and mutually benefit the world around them.

• Recently, students in the Faculty of Architecture collected data, conducted research, studied limitations and opportunities, and presented proposals to lead to real building projects in Luk Zuk Village in China.
• Students in the Faculty of Social Sciences joined the Migrant Outreach Education Initiative (MOEI) to provide intensive English language education for migrant children and adults in countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and China.
• HKU's Mentorship programme annually brings together alumni/friends of HKU (Mentors) and its undergraduates (Mentees) to with students' to create supportive mentoring relationships and facilitate educational, social and personal growth.

International Exposure
The University of Hong Kong is committed to nurturing its students as global citizens and to provide them with as many international education opportunities as it can throughout their studies at the University. Aside from bringing in hundreds of exchange and visiting students from around the world onto our campus, The Office of International Student Exchange (OISE) works closely with various Universities internationally on strategic partnerships in joint academic and research collaborations.

• Study abroad opportunities: With 270 partner universities from across Africa, Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia to choose from, students are provided with diverse international education opportunities throughout their studies. Students have a chance to undertake one or two semesters, or a summer exchange at universities as reputed as University of Cambridge, Princeton University, McGill University and Yale University, and choices as diverse as Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Tsinghua University, Stellenbosch University or University of Vienna and many more.
• International Academic Programmes: The Harvard College in Asia Programme invites HKU students to a week-long conference at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. This conference combines academic, cultural, and social activities, with a strong emphasis on student-to-student interaction. In the following months, HKU hosts a similar programme at our own facilities and our students host delegates from Harvard University.

Service
There is awareness across all areas of the University that we have a responsibility to translate our knowledge to the benefit of society. HKU staff, students and alumni have been volunteering in the community for many years. Some spend their holidays providing medical or engineering expertise in distressed communities in Africa or Asia. Others venture into the Hong Kong community to help those in need or improve the environment. Activities of this sort are under the Service 100 platform which connects volunteers with projects in the community and enables the sharing of results.

The student run service projects receive funding and support from the University, and give participants valuable experience by seeing their project from formulation to execution.

• A group of students went to rural Nepal to transfer rural technology to villages of Nepal, including an improvised stove (with ventilation that is better for health) and a pot-in-pot cooler (for longer and better preservation of crops). The project, which lasted for one year, aimed to produce long-lasting impacts and improvements in the villages.
• Each year HKU students engage with NGO, Light for Children, in Ghana, Africa to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and conduct workshops on sexual health and security amongst children and young adults. The NGO, co-founded by an HKU alumnus 2005 while he was still studying at the University, invites volunteers from HKU to take leading roles in its activities each year.

Knowledge and Research
The University aims to cultivate international collaborations at every level, from the individual academic to departments and faculties to the institutional level. These connections bring us together with the best researchers in the world and enhance our capacity to produce research of global importance.

• A partnership on biomedical science research was signed with McGill University in January 2011.
• HKU opened the Global Forest Observatory in June as part of an international research programme on the impact of climate change on forest dynamics. The project is operated by HKU's Kadoorie Institute and is part of an international project coordinated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution.
• HKU is also proceeding with the establishment of a hospital in Shenzhen to be jointly run with the authorities there. It illustrates both our proven strengths as a centre of world-class research, and our potential to make a difference beyond our borders.

 
The New Centennial Campus
The HKU estate has expanded significantly with the opening of a new campus extension. The Centennial Campus represents the University's vision of a new teaching paradigm and a new learning experience which will offer university students and staff a dramatically enhanced environment to help fulfil the University's ambition to be among the very best in the world. The new campus provides a 21st century academic environment with a learning commons, university piazza, flexible classrooms, new restaurants serving diverse cuisines, ICT and lecture theatres and state-of-the-art facilities which are already very popular amongst students.
 
As the University enters its second century with a solid reputation, we aspire to reach greater heights of academic excellence and international renown as one of the world's leading institutions of higher learning.