Enhancing the physical ambience of the campus
We have planned for and completed the first phase of our student residences, but the capital-funded projects committed for the next five years will make a striking impact on the physical environment of the main campus and to the area around the University. A new Multimedia Building is to be developed as an architectural signature for the School of Creative Media and other departments involved in digital technologies. An Academic Building and Student Activities Centre on the student residences site and a high-rise Landmark Building will shift the physical focus of the campus northward, while an organic unity is to be maintained through a convenient covered elevated walkway between the north campus and the main site.
We are also engaged in a review of the existing set up of classrooms, the library, laboratories, and other academic space within existing buildings. We wish to give our main discipline areas their own "homes" and to bring teaching laboratories closer to staff and students. The physical relocation of the College should provide additional flexibility making this possible.
The effort to complete and bring into use these buildings and related works will inevitably assume an important place in the life of the University through to 2008 and beyond. All these efforts take their direction from our ongoing determination to create at CityU an ambience that encourages and sustains the work of scholarship and the learning partnership between students and staff.
Communications technology
CityU has always recognised the profound impact on our work of the new generation of communications technologies and the dramatic increase in the capacity to harness and provide information. Indeed this has been one of the University's core strengths. But adjusting to these changes requires an on-going commitment. This is particularly the case because universities are in their nature knowledge-based organisations, and because we are called on to prepare the next generation to handle these new technologies.
Our strategy has two main features. Firstly we intend to seize the opportunities created by the rapid advance of communications technologies and information management to set the agenda for units supporting student learning. This means rethinking the "library", opening up the collection for on-line access through courses and programmes and rethinking access to services that support students as they progress through their studies.
Secondly we will continue the work of delivering more and better administrative services on-line through web-based applications. The new platforms are making possible greater personalisation of internet access and better distribution of work in a flatter organisation, and are making available a greater range of current, accurate information to guide policy.
Goals for Infrastructure
- Enhancing the physical ambience for scholarship and learning by completing a major building programme.
- Enriching the environment for student learning by making maximum use of the opportunities created by a more residential campus and new communications technologies.
- Bringing services to staff and students on-line and in real time.
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