The Chinese University was established in 1963 and it was formally inaugurated on the 17th day of October in the year 1963. The University has thrived for five decades and will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2013.
According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, anniversary is the date on which an event took place in a previous year or in the past. It is therefore correct to say that we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of inauguration on 17 October 2013 (a date) but safer to qualify anniversary with the word year when referring to the year-long period when celebratory activities take place, as in:
A plethora of academic and cultural activities are being planned to celebrate the anniversary year.
A decade is a period of 10 years. Note that it starts counting in the first year and so the first decade of the twenty-first century is 2001–2010, the second decade is 2011–2020, and so on.
The first decade of CUHK is from 1963 to 1972, its second decade from 1973 to 1982, and so on. We are thus in the last year of its fifth decade and will be entering its sixth as a higher learning institution in 2013.
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