Media

HKU to Broaden International Exposure for Students

08 Nov 2007

 

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) endeavours to provide every full-time undergraduate student with at least one overseas exposure opportunity in their study at the University in the future.

Greeting students at the sharing session as they shared their international exchange experience today (November 8), Dr Victor Fung, Chairman of Council of HKU, said in face of the challenges and opportunities of globalisation, the University has always strived to nurture young global leaders who are dedicated to serving others, and contributing to finding solutions to global issues of today and tomorrow.

"There is no better way to learn about an unfamiliar culture, a person or a community than to live with it, to feel it and to experience it first hand.  The experience of our students has repeatedly reinforced our belief that practical experience of learning, working, or serving outside Hong Kong can have great impact on the vision of our future leaders," said Dr Fung.

At present, HKU full-time undergraduate students have the opportunity to attend various international programmes. These include a wide spectrum of activities of varied nature such as exchange studies with some 150 partner institutions in 23 countries, hundreds of internships or voluntary services with overseas governments, non-governmental organizations or corporations, and numerous study trips, and international conferences.

Professor Lap-Chee Tsui, Vice-Chancellor, HKU said, "Enhancing students' inter-cultural exposure and understanding of global issues are among our major aims in the curriculum reform we are now working on for the introduction of the four-year curriculum in 2012."

Growing from modest beginnings a decade ago, HKU's student mobility and global development programmes have experienced quantum leap in terms of number of student-participants, countries and overseas partner-institutions involved, as well as diversity of the programmes' nature and content. In the academic year 2006/07, a total of 735 HKU students had the opportunities to study abroad in 23 countries involving 148 overseas institutions. The number increases to over 900 in the current academic year.

The spirit of internationalization has never been higher at HKU. The surge in the number of non-local students studying undergraduate programmes particularly rocketed in the past three years, with 44% increase, at 1,052 non-local students studying at HKU in the current academic year.

Thanking the donors and sponsors who attended the student-sharing session, Professor Tsui said the increase would not have been possible without the generous support from our community.

"I hope that the benefits of international exposure, as vividly experienced by our students and graduates, would be so convincing for donors that we can have support to substantially increase our students' overseas exposure opportunities even prior to 2012," said Professor Tsui.

The valuable and diverse experience of 47 students in different international programmes in the last few years are captured in the university publication "One World". They represent some of our students with international exposure in different parts of the world. The on-line version can be accessed at:- http://www.hku.hk/oneworld

For photos of the event, please click in http://www.hku.hk/hkumedia/ and check icon "Photo Gallery".

For enquiries please contact Senior Manager (Media) Ms Cherry Cheung (Tel: 2859 2606 / E-mail: cherry.cheung@hku.hk); or Manager (Media) Ms Denise Wong (Tel: 2859 2600 / E-mail: denise.wong@hku.hk)