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No. 45 • 1 August 2005
 

 

Second Matching Grant Scheme
 The University Grants Committee (UGC)'s Second Matching Grant Scheme runs from 1 August 2005 to 28 February 2006. A "floor amount" of HK$45 million has been set aside as a guaranteed amount for each institution up to 31 January 2006. A "ceiling", or upper limit, of HK$250 million can be claimed by each institution on a first-come, first-served basis. The grant will be disbursed on a $1 to $1 matching ratio up to the floor amount of HK$45 million and a $1 for $2 matching ratio, i.e., $1 Government matching grant for every $2 donated, beyond the floor amount.

Private donations for activities within the ambit of UGC recurrent grants, scholarships (including for non-local students and for student exchanges) and capital works are eligible to be matched. However, the matching grants and investment income generated from donations for capital works must be used for activities within the ambit of UGC recurrent grants or for scholarships.

Given CityU's record in the last round, it is hoped that it will do well this time. However, extra efforts will be needed, as the prevailing circumstances for fundraising in Hong Kong in general and for CityU in particular have changed since the last round, making it necessary for CityU to work harder to obtain large donations from the limited number of potential donors.

 

Launch of the Blackboard Production Environment
In preparation for Semester A, 2005–06, the new Blackboard Production environment became effective from 26 July 2005. All CityU staff and students can access the system via the CityU Homepage (click on e-Portal2), and logon using their CityU electronic IDs and passwords. All courses to be offered in Semester A which previously used WebCT or Bb5 have been converted and migrated onto the Blackboard (Bb6) production environment.

The Education Development Office (EDO), with its redefined mission in student learning, staff development and e-learning initiatives, has taken on the responsibility to head and coordinate the support for e-learning. In line with the launch of the Blackboard production environment, the EDO has organized some instructor training sessions to explain the various teaching functions and explore some assessment possibilities. For details and registration: http://edo.cityu.edu.hk/edo/Bb6.

In addition, online and face-to-face sessions to train student mentors and new students will be organized as part of the orientation programmes to help students become accustomed to the Blackboard system.

 

Mainland student recruitment
CityU's recruitment exercise on the mainland has been completed with excellent results. The number of new students admitted in the 2005–06 academic year through the National Joint Entrance Examination Scheme is expected to meet the target quota of 150 and the quality of the students admitted is excellent. For example, the scores of 13 of the Beijing students admitted exceed the baseline for key universities in the capital by more than 100 marks. The average score for English of the mainland students admitted is 124 (out of 150).

 

Korean language radio programme
Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), in collaboration with CityU, will launch a new 26-episode Korean language radio programme entitled "Let's go Korea!" in mid August.

Ms Julia Han Ji Yeon and Ms Kim Won Kyung, Instructors in the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, took part in the production of the programme, which is sponsored and supported by the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Hong Kong. They also contributed to the writing of the main content of a booklet to be published by the CityU Press specially for the programme. The booklet will be freely distributed to local public libraries and institutions.

 

Kudos
 Ms Vinci Chang Wan-si, a graduate from the Department of Electronic Engineering (EE), clinched the championship in the Undergraduate Section of the IEE Hong Kong Younger Members Section Paper Contest 2005 with her research paper "Retrodirective Array for RFID and Microwave Tracking Beacon Applications". Ms Teresa Mak Ka-ming, also an EE graduate, won the merit award in the same contest for her paper "Design of High Gain Microstrip Antenna Arrays".

 

More kudos
Ms Penny Jiang Shujun, a PhD student in the Department of English and Communication, was awarded an Excellent Paper Award at the 2005 Conference of the Communication Association of China for her paper, entitled "Media, Community, and Social Harmony".

 

International Conferences
The 4th International Conference on Web-Based Learning co-organized by the Hong Kong Web Society, CityU and PolyU, held from 31 July to 3 August on campus, has attracted over a hundred international scholars, local secondary school principals and teachers to explore the latest development in e-learning.

An international conference on "Legal Issues Relating to the Protection of Bio-safety" will be organized by the School of Law, 23–24 August at CityU.

 
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