CityU in the past fifteen years—Part 1

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, I will retire from the CityU presidency in May 2023. When I took over the job in 2008, I ushered in and put into practice the One Health concept. Over the years, I led thousands of CityU faculty and staff, students and alumni in the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon every year in spite of sometimes cold wind and rain, except in 2020 and 2022 when the race was cancelled due to the pandemic. This year, the last time I led the delegation, 500 colleagues, students and alumni joined the race.  

Fifteen years allows sufficient time for substantial improvements. I am glad that with the support and concerted efforts of our students, faculty, staff, stakeholders, alumni, donors and friends, together we have witnessed the growth of the University. In particular, to prepare our graduates for leadership and success in the increasingly global environment of this century, internationalisation has always been one of our key strategic plans. We now have over 9,000 non-local students from 70 countries and regions. Our international centre at the junction of Cornwall Street and Tat Hong Avenue, which will facilitate this development, is now nearing completion. 

Physically, CityU has expanded tremendously. During my term, the following buildings were completed on campus: the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre (2010), the Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building (2011), Student Hostel halls (Hall 10 & Hall 11) (2011) and the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (2012). The tentatively named AC6 building is being planned to accommodate the growth of our academic programmes. It will be a multi-storey building containing wet and dry laboratories, learning commons and lecture rooms, supporting new programmes to enhance our academic development. It is scheduled for completion in 2031. 

Given the limited space on the Kowloon Tong campus, our off-campus space has expanded over the past years.          Since 2012, CityU has rented four contiguous floors covering about 2,100 square metres in Nam Shan Estate for research personnel offices and dry laboratories. To free more space for on-campus offices and laboratories, in 2017, we acquired 4,380 square metres of office space over four floors at Montery Plaza, near the Ngau Tau Kok MTR station. Our companion animal clinic, the CityU Veterinary Medical Centre, was opened in 2019 in 3,343 square metres of space that we acquired in Trinity Towers in Sham Shui Po. The clinic is the largest in Hong Kong. In March 2022, our CityU Farm in Lam Tsuen, a dairy farm equipped with international standard facilities, was completed. With such valuable space, I am pleased that the 2023 CityU campus, both on and off, facilitates and promotes the work of our faculty, staff and students at international standards.

The distance of the journey doesn’t matter, the lack of aspiration does!

Way Kuo
President and University Distinguished Professor