Bulletin Spring 1976

Sense of Community Take Stock of the Past, Plan Vigorously for the Future There have been great changes since this University was founded. The University itself has steadily expanded in size, the community of Hong Kong which it serves has also not only become bigger and internationally more important, it has also changed its economic characteristics, offering ever wider opportunities for the application of the professional and social sciences as well as managerial skills of the highest order. The official party: (from left) Mr. Ho Shai-Lai, Dr. the Hon. Q.W. Lee, Dr. Choh-Ming Li, Sir Murray MacLehose, Dr. R.C. Lee, Lady Cho-Tiu Kwan, Dr. S.W. Tarn A good university is not just a knowledge machine but a grouping of people. And the right atmosphere in which teachers and students can both give of their best can only be achieved if all feel they belong to a community in which they take pride, a community of scholars dedicated to learning. This sense of community can best be created through common purpose and common corporate life. And this in turn presupposes an organization in which teaching and learning and living and working and playing together are facilitated through the proper full and complementary functioning of all its many parts. It has not been easy for this University to achieve this corporate sense because its history is relatively short and because of its tripartite origins. But it has achieved it, and this says much for the enthusiasm and vision of all concerned. Though it has not yet been decided what the rate of expansion of this University will be in the next quadrennium, further expansion there will certainly be, and this will include a second medical school. Such a school will meet both the obvious needs of the community, and also the wish of the University to give a heavier weighting to the professional faculties. These developments have been and will be great indeed, but even the environment of the University will also change and within a measurable time it will be on the edge of a new township of 500,000 in which will be its own teaching hospital. The University has now existed for more than a decade, and with changes of such a scale in the University itself and in the community having already taken place, and with the prospect of more change to come, it is right and natural that the University should, as it is doing, take stock of the past and plan vigorously for the future so that both technically and organizationally it may be equipped for the tasks ahead. New efforts will be required to meet the heavy demands of our rapidly developing city and to enable our young people to make, as they wish, an ever increasing contribution to it. In these efforts both the existing staff, who have already done so much, and those yet to come in the future, will have many great opportunities. I am confident that our University will rise to these new challenges in the way its benefactors and the whole community expect. 3