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The Faculty believes the new administrative structure will bring sufficient efficiency gains to lighten the burden of managing the faculty for the academic staff, so that they can concentrate more on teaching and research; enhance disciplines now housed in small departments; strengthen academic leadership with a view to advancing critical masses in preparation for the 4-year university undergraduate programme in 2012; and promote intellectual synergies and interdisciplinary work.
The 5-school working model affirms the University's aspirations and strategic intent to maintain its unique position as the premier English-medium university in Asia. The model offers greater opportunities for core humanities disciplines to develop into a focal area of strength of the Faculty and the University, and it also forms a stronger disciplinary area of modern languages and cultures to support Hong Kong's international perspective.
The process of discussion on administrative restructuring started four years ago, following the University's academic review of the Faculty of Arts in 2001 which recommended that the Faculty should undertake strategic planning and rationalization of the curriculum and of administrative procedures to stimulate intellectual synergies and research, cross-departmental collaboration, and to enhance academic leadership. The initiative was also a response to reduced faculty budget and the number of student places over the past five years, which had lead to a situation where a number of departments in the Faculty had only 3 to 4 teachers. With a heavy administrative workload on top of their teaching and research commitments, this situation was untenable in the long run.
The Faculty has subsequently been through an extensive exercise of identifying its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in early 2004, and conducted 4 open forums for all faculty members and student representatives to discuss various proposals on 23 March 2004, 20 April 2004, 1 June 2004, and 8 March 2005 respectively, followed by a faculty-wide survey carried out in March 2005. It also made reference to some of the more recent restructuring experiences that institutions overseas had gone through, the most exemplary of which include the College of Humanities and Social Science of the University of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Sydney, and the Faculty of the Humanities of the University of Copenhagen. The Acting Dean wrote to 2,235 current Arts students and 6,000 Arts alumni via email in June 2005, sharing with them the background to the process initiated, where it stood, and what the Faculty hoped to accomplish.
The Faculty wishes to emphasize that the groupings have been accepted by an overwhelming majority of the Faculty Board members; as yet it is a working model; and follow-up discussions will take place in which the details will be resolved within the proposed schools in consultation with various stakeholders, including the students, staff and alumni. It also wishes to stress that this administrative restructuring is neither about cutting teaching programmes, nor about staff redundancy. To the contrary, the wide spectrum of teaching programmes offered by the Faculty will continue to be available after restructuring, individual disciplinary identity and departmental profile will be maintained, and none of the academic or support staff will be made redundant as a result of the restructuring. In fact, the Faculty has recently recruited one chair professor in humanities and one chair professor in English and is in the process of recruiting three new Assistant Professors to contribute to the BA/BEd double degree programme and one Assistant Professor in Hong Kong history studies.
The Faculty is very proud of being placed highly among the world's outstanding universities in the field of arts and humanities, as ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement. We are also very fortunate in having Professor Kam Louie, a renowned sinologist from the Australian National University, take up the Arts Deanship in November 2005. The new Dean has been an active participant in the planning of the restructuring during the past few months. He and the Faculty of Arts are committed to providing the best humanities programme in Hong Kong and the region.
For further inquiries, please contact Professor Kirsten Refsing of the Faculty of Arts at 2859-8046 or 9107-1840.
HKU Arts Faculty Administrative Restructuring
27 Oct 2005
The Faculty Board of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Hong Kong agreed in principle, at its meeting held on October 10, 2005, a working model to administratively restructure its 11 academic units into 5 schools (1. Chinese, 2. English and Language Communication, 3. Geography, 4. Modern Languages and Cultures, 5. Humanities). The names of the schools will be decided later by the schools themselves.
The Faculty believes the new administrative structure will bring sufficient efficiency gains to lighten the burden of managing the faculty for the academic staff, so that they can concentrate more on teaching and research; enhance disciplines now housed in small departments; strengthen academic leadership with a view to advancing critical masses in preparation for the 4-year university undergraduate programme in 2012; and promote intellectual synergies and interdisciplinary work.
The 5-school working model affirms the University's aspirations and strategic intent to maintain its unique position as the premier English-medium university in Asia. The model offers greater opportunities for core humanities disciplines to develop into a focal area of strength of the Faculty and the University, and it also forms a stronger disciplinary area of modern languages and cultures to support Hong Kong's international perspective.
The process of discussion on administrative restructuring started four years ago, following the University's academic review of the Faculty of Arts in 2001 which recommended that the Faculty should undertake strategic planning and rationalization of the curriculum and of administrative procedures to stimulate intellectual synergies and research, cross-departmental collaboration, and to enhance academic leadership. The initiative was also a response to reduced faculty budget and the number of student places over the past five years, which had lead to a situation where a number of departments in the Faculty had only 3 to 4 teachers. With a heavy administrative workload on top of their teaching and research commitments, this situation was untenable in the long run.
The Faculty has subsequently been through an extensive exercise of identifying its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in early 2004, and conducted 4 open forums for all faculty members and student representatives to discuss various proposals on 23 March 2004, 20 April 2004, 1 June 2004, and 8 March 2005 respectively, followed by a faculty-wide survey carried out in March 2005. It also made reference to some of the more recent restructuring experiences that institutions overseas had gone through, the most exemplary of which include the College of Humanities and Social Science of the University of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Sydney, and the Faculty of the Humanities of the University of Copenhagen. The Acting Dean wrote to 2,235 current Arts students and 6,000 Arts alumni via email in June 2005, sharing with them the background to the process initiated, where it stood, and what the Faculty hoped to accomplish.
The Faculty wishes to emphasize that the groupings have been accepted by an overwhelming majority of the Faculty Board members; as yet it is a working model; and follow-up discussions will take place in which the details will be resolved within the proposed schools in consultation with various stakeholders, including the students, staff and alumni. It also wishes to stress that this administrative restructuring is neither about cutting teaching programmes, nor about staff redundancy. To the contrary, the wide spectrum of teaching programmes offered by the Faculty will continue to be available after restructuring, individual disciplinary identity and departmental profile will be maintained, and none of the academic or support staff will be made redundant as a result of the restructuring. In fact, the Faculty has recently recruited one chair professor in humanities and one chair professor in English and is in the process of recruiting three new Assistant Professors to contribute to the BA/BEd double degree programme and one Assistant Professor in Hong Kong history studies.
The Faculty is very proud of being placed highly among the world's outstanding universities in the field of arts and humanities, as ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement. We are also very fortunate in having Professor Kam Louie, a renowned sinologist from the Australian National University, take up the Arts Deanship in November 2005. The new Dean has been an active participant in the planning of the restructuring during the past few months. He and the Faculty of Arts are committed to providing the best humanities programme in Hong Kong and the region.
For further inquiries, please contact Professor Kirsten Refsing of the Faculty of Arts at 2859-8046 or 9107-1840.
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