Professor Shekhar Kumta, Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology of CUHK’s Faculty of Medicine, was awarded a 2012 UGC Award for Teaching Excellence by the University Grants Committee. This is the second year in a row in which a CUHK professor reaps this top honour since the award scheme commenced last year.

Professor Kumta joined CUHK in 1989 and has won many CUHK teaching awards including the Vice-Chancellor's Exemplary Teaching Award. He is a knowledgeable and caring teacher as well as an innovator of applying the latest technology in the delivery of medical education. He has made extensive use of an e-learning platform that simulates complex cases and allows students to learn individually at their own pace before gaining practical experience with real patients. He has also developed the innovative Formative Assessment Case Studies (FACS) e-learning platform, in which students make complex management and diagnostic decisions and receive formative feedback. His approach to medical education, which emphasizes the contextual relevance of patients' problems to the underlying basic science through the structured exposure of students to clinical cases, has been widely praised and included in the AMEE (Association of Medical Education in Europe) Guides to Clinical Teaching as a blueprint for other clinical teachers.

However, Professor Kumta is too seasoned a medical practitioner to ignore that cure is adminstered by people as much as by technology. He does not only sharpen the mind of his students but also prepares their souls for the many tough choices and decisions lying ahead in their career. In one particularly impressive project, he allowed and closely supervised his students and interns to come into close contact with patients with terminal bone cancer so as to cultivate their sense of empathy through eye-witnessing the pain and suffering of terminally ill patients.

Professor Joseph J.Y. Sung, Vice-Chancellor and President of CUHK, is pleased with Professor Kumta’s award. He said, ‘His passion in teaching is exemplary for many teachers and has motivated many of his peers to fulfill the University's primary mission of instilling knowledge into young people of promise, and to nurture and equip them to become responsible citizens.’

In his acceptance speech on 6 September, Professor Kumta said, ‘I consider it a privilege to be given the opportunity to teach, for teaching comes with responsibility. What we teach and the way we teach will touch the lives of many countless others.’ He intends to use the award money for the cost-effective development and application of mobile learning technology in the delivery of healthcare and health science education through a serious of open workshops, as he believes that effective e-learning can improve the quality of face-time interaction as students are better prepared and will have a positive impact on learning.