15
The HKUST Arts Festival, held over March and April 2015,
reached out across the campus community, delivering a
rich collection of visual and performing art events. Popular
Broadway musical comedy
Urinetown
was staged at the
HKUST Summer Musical 2015. To promote water sports in
addition to track and field activities, a Water Sports Festival
was held featuring water polo, coastal rowing, dragon
boating and kayaking.
Integrating Community Service
Service learning is an integral part of students’ education
experience. HKUST Connect collaborated with 79 community
partners and engaged 3,125 students in 139 service projects
in 2014-15. The signature HKUST Service Learning Day
recruited 906 students, faculty members, staff and alumni
to serve in 46 service projects with 38 community partners
over three days in April 2015.
The University encouraged student-initiated activities via
a range of schemes, including the President’s 1-HKUST
Student Life Award (25 projects), Student Enrichment
Activities Fund (70 projects) and the Graduate Student Life
Fund (29 projects), while events such as TEDxHKUST 2015
were successfully organized by students on campus. On the
leadership development front, the REDbird Award Program
recruited 130 members and eight student leaders (coaches)
in 2014-15 and a total of 89 REDbird gold, silver and bronze
awards were granted.
POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION
The overall postgraduate student population grew by
6.4% in 2014-15. The total headcount was 4,515 as of
31 December 2014, including research postgraduates and
taught postgraduates.
Research Postgraduate Students
In 2014-15, student numbers experienced steady growth
in the previous year to 1,842, as of 31 December 2014. Over
80% of students came from places outside Hong Kong, the
majority from Mainland China. A Task Force on Promotion and
Outreach to Local Research Postgraduates was established
to formulate and develop strategies to attract high-quality
local research postgraduates to HKUST. Efforts included
the launch of a new matching-fund scheme to encourage
departments to recruit more local research postgraduates,
resulting in a significant increase of 150% in the number
of new local enrollment. The percentage of international
research postgraduates increased steadily, reaching 11.1%
in 2014-15.
The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, established in 2009
by the Research Grants Council, seeks to attract the best and
brightest students in the world to pursue their PhD programs
at Hong Kong institutions. The University received the largest
number of Fellowship awardees among sister institutions in
2014-15, securing 65 out of a total of 223 awards, which is
equivalent to 29.1%, for the whole of Hong Kong.
The Overseas Research Awards Scheme offered funding
support for senior PhD students to participate in research
work in overseas institutions. The number of awards was
maintained at 36. Research Travel Grant Program funding,
which helps research postgraduates to attend conferences,
rose to $4 million in 2014-15 as student numbers increased.
Students on visiting internships continued to grow steadily,
up to 75 in 2014-15, while the matching-fund scheme
for international visiting internship students provided funding
support for 41 eligible visiting internship students.
Among new initiatives, a Master of Philosophy Program
in Technology Leadership and Entrepreneurship was
introduced by the School of Engineering. In addition, the
Asian Future Leaders Scholarship Program, funded by
Bai Xian Education Foundation, was also established to
support high-caliber Asian students to pursue MPhil studies
at the University. Nine MPhil students were awarded this
scholarship.
A Task Force on Research Postgraduate Education was
established to review the operation of the Professional
Development Course, first introduced in Fall 2013. The
review was launched to enhance key elements, such as
research ethics training and entrepreneurship. The course is
mandatory for all new research postgraduates.
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