Mr Fung Yee-wang was the first warden of Old Halls, a student hostel at Hong Kong University, which has now been demolished. Reading about the HKIEd's call for hall bursary donations on "PTU (Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union) News", he discussed the matter with several Old Halls residents and came up with a fund-raising plan. At a recent annual hall-dinner, Mr Fung persuaded his fellow alumni to support the cause. Among the guests was Dr Lai Kwok-chan, a current member of HKIEd staff. Dr Lai helped to spread the word to everyone present, and within just about a month, a total sum of $381,000 was raised by the generous Old Halls alumni.
Donations collected by Mr Fung will be earmarked for hall bursaries for financially disadvantaged students, giving them an equal chance to experience hostel life. The amount raised is expected to benefit about 120 students.
Hostel life is an essential part of tertiary education. As Mr Hung Ching-tin, public affairs critic and alumnus of Old Halls, pointed out in his Ming Pao newspaper column. University hostels provide a platform for young students to explore their independence and personal growth through close friendships and interaction with others.
To help our students acquire a whole-person education, build solid foundations for their future teaching careers, and learn important inter-personal and problem-solving skills, the HKIEd encourages and promotes full student integration into campus life. Since the 2005/06 academic year, all full time pre-service students are required to live on campus in their first year at the Institute.
If you would like to make a donation to help our financially disadvantaged students experience hostel life, please contact Ms Maggie Lee, Assistant Manager (Institutional Advancement) of the Communications and Institutional Advancement Office.
Tel: 2948 8468; Email: myylee@ied.edu.hk
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Early childhood education gains million-dollar support from
Mr Wilson Pong |
Following the government's recent move to widen subsidies in pre-school education, the concern is now on teaching quality. In appreciation of the generous support given to the Department of Early Childhood Education by Mr Wilson Pong, Executive Director of EVI Education Asia Ltd, a naming ceremony was held on 14 December 2006 for the Wilson Pong Lecture Theatre. Mr Pong, his wife Mrs Helena Pong and his parents Mr Pong Kwok-boon and Mrs Dorothy Pong Lo Shuk-yin (Director of the Po Leung Kuk and Supervisor of the Yan Oi Tong Pong Lo Shuk-yin Kindergarten) were invited to officiate at the ceremony and share their views on early childhood education with HKIEd teachers and students.
In a bid to widen the exposure and improve the quality and standard of early childhood educators, Mr Pong donated nearly a million dollars to the Department of Early Childhood Education. Mr Pong's donations will benefit the extra-curricular studies, overseas exchange programmes and study tours for the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) (four-year full-time) Programme. The Department itself will also channel a part of the donation to upgrade its research and development projects, such as the application of information technology in the learning and teaching of early childhood education.
On behalf of the Institute, Prof Morris expressed his deep gratitude to Mr Wilson Pong for his generous donations, which will enrich the campus life of prospective early childhood teaching professionals, both in their learning experiences and vision cultivation. The donations will launch various research projects which will enhance levels of professionalism in early childhood education.
In 2005/06, the Institute launched its degree programme in Early Childhood Education, the first of its kind in Hong Kong. Its popularity is evident from the overwhelming number of applications received from Advanced-level students. Applications to the programme have been several times over-subscribed for three consecutive years. This year, the Early Childhood Education programme again registered the highest number of applications among all HKIEd's programmes.
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Promoting the art of traditional Chinese painting - Ms Kun Yim-fong acts in memory of her guru |
The Chinese painting virtuoso, the late Peng Ximing, was highly respected in Hong Kong for his masterworks and his dedication to the teaching of traditional Chinese painting. His painting style was characterised by elegance and sublimity. Zhang Daqian, world-famous master-painter in contemporary Chinese art history, has described Pang as "excelling his generation both in writing and painting", and as "an incredible genius in the last three hundred years".
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Ms Kun Yim-fong, a pupil of Master Peng, started to make donations to the HKIEd Development Fund as early as 2003. The purpose of her donations is to carry forward Peng's noble ideal of promoting Chinese painting. Ms Kun's donations have therefore given birth to the Pang Jop Ming Memorial Scholarship for Art (Painting), which aims to encourage HKIEd students majoring in the Visual Arts to pursue their artistic talents. Many of our students have benefited from this scholarship since its establishment. |
Further enhancing the artistic insight of the Institute's staff and students, Ms Kun topped up her donations with another $200,000 last year to set up the Peng Ximing Chinese Arts and Culture Resource Studio. The Studio displays historical records of how Master Peng taught Chinese painting to his pupils, giving visitors an insight into Peng's philosophies behind his paintings. In February 2007, Ms Kun organised a two-week exhibition named "Succession of the Six Disciplines : An Exhibition of Paintings by Peng Ximing, Education Resources and Winners of the "Chinese Arts and Culture Creative Teaching Design Competition" at the Taipo campus. Dozens of highly-treasured original paintings, sketches and demonstrative works created by the Master were on display. Acting on the wishes of her guru, Ms Kun has made every endeavour to foster the development of Chinese arts and culture. Her devotion to the enhancement of traditional Chinese ink and wash paintings is providing a legacy to Hong Kong's education sector.
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Full support from Dr Tsui Ping-kwong for teacher education in business studies |
Strong support for teacher education in business information was recorded last year, when Dr Tsui Ping Kwong, Chairman of the Shing Hing Industrial Limited, made a $150,000 donation to the HKIEd. Spanning a five-year period (2006-2010), the Tsui Ping Kwong Bursaries were established to encourage students majoring in business studies, to become excellent prospective teachers through dedication to their academic pursuits. With Dr Tsui and his family officiating, a ceremony was held on 14 October 2006 for the 40-seat "Dr Tsui Ping Kwong Business Information Room", which was named after Dr Tsui, in appreciation of his generosity.
Speaking on behalf of the HKIEd, Prof Morris extended his gratitude to Dr Tsui for his contribution to the promotion of teacher education in business studies. A model industrialist, Dr Tsui demonstrated his interest, care and concern for students, by taking the time to have a friendly chat with many of them after the ceremony.
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Lee Hysan Foundation continues support to boost language standards among student teachers |
Since 1998, the Lee Hysan Foundation has generously donated a total of $4.5 million to the HKIEd. Scholarships have been set up to sponsor full-time students majoring in English or Chinese languages, for immersion programmes overseas or in mainland China. The objective of these immersion programmes is to strengthen students' language and teaching skills, as well as to give them the opportunity to broaden their horizons. The scholarships have so far helped more than 150 students.
With help from the Hong Kong America Centre, HKIEd also introduced the "Graduate English Tutors Scheme" last year; a team of overseas university graduates are employed in the capacity of English tutors at the campus for a period of two years. Tutors employed under the Scheme have to demonstrate a high level of English and teaching skills. Through hostel functions and group tutorials at the Centre for Language in Education, these tutors provide language training to students and facilitate occasions for cultural exchanges outside the classroom. The closeness in age between the tutors and students, coupled with their mutual interest in foreign cultures, contribute to the success of the Scheme. An attendance rate of over 90% has been recorded for these "alternative-learning" activities. Students participating in the Scheme have shown enhancements in their levels of English and broadened horizons.
The outstanding results of the "Graduate English Tutors Scheme" have convinced the Lee Hysan Foundation to sponsor $1 million per year for its continuation in the next three years. Maximising its support for the Scheme, the Foundation presented its first-year donation before the third Matching Grant Scheme period concluded. As a result, HKIEd was able to double the funding for the greater benefits of our students.
The HKIEd is very grateful for this generous support from the Lee Hysan Foundation, the Hong Kong America Centre, and all other individual donors and benefactors. To keep our many projects and schemes going, we will be doing our best to gain even greater support from the community into the future.
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The Sylvia Shive Memorial Fund for language and cross-cultural enhancement |
The Sylvia Shive Memorial Fund, which supports the Institute's student language and cross-cultural enhancement initiatives, has donated $150,000 in addition to also helping to arrange for graduates from the US, with the support of the Hong Kong America Centre, to stay and teach at HKIEd's campus. The Fund, as well as the Lee Hysan Foundation, will benefit the Graduate English Tutor Scheme for the three years to come.
The late Mrs Sylvia Shive dedicated her life to nurturing students around the globe. After a signing ceremony on 5 February 2007, Dr Glenn Shive read aloud a very touching poem in memory of his wife.
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Teacher Gardeners of Tolo
By Dr Glenn Shive
Sylvia tended her garden on our terrace
Looking over the Tolo estuary
To Taipo and the mountain gate to China beyond. |
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Sylvia tended her garden on our terrace
Looking over the Tolo estuary
To Taipo and the mountain gate to China beyond.
She cultivated students in classroom gardens
And tutorial pots
From sharecropper colleges
To the grand plantations of the university.
For fifty years she taught and twigged and toiled
In north woods and rain forests of people packed
Into half the globe
From North America to East Asia
and back.
From whippersnappers in prairie grass
To exotic scholars with colorful plumage of robes and processions
From gifted succulents, the pruned and the un-pruned
To gangly late-bloomers growing on the scruffy fences
And fertile hollows of family farms of instruction.
She taught tenacious refugees in America
Up-rooted from Siberian political tundra
Over-achieving snapdragons with student visas soon to run out
Smart-assed rich-kid roses smelling of the sweet ambition of indulgent parents
And the wilted, undaunted victors of the desperate halls of examination hell.
Sylvia loved all these flowers of humanity learning
Leafy green aspiring, all turning in their own way
To the gracious sky-crossing curves of the eternal knowing sun
Thank God. Sylvia taught children to be adults
And adults to become children again.
She taught at the cross-over sweet-spot from self to other
Nurturing the language of confidence
From comprehension to speech
From insight to the written word.
Of all the flora in the forest of learning
She loved the blushing blossoms of adolescence best. |
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With her classroom projecting voice
And easy gesturing hands
Knowing every student's name
She touched people as teacher
She touched people for life.
This greater Tolo garden will blossom in seasons to come
New teachers will wander into its verdant valleys
And future pedagogues will hike its windy hillsides.
But now Sylvia's chair on the terrace is empty
The plants in her pots, strewn untended under dust
Have forgotten how to shine.
But will come another, and yet another, adventuresome gardener
To settle for a time in this podium's place of learning
Young teachers bring their worlds of wanting from afar
To learn, to teach, to learn better how to teach
To recognise the sound of themselves in the arcing echo
Between the green-armed mountains of Taipo
And the subtle sea-weeded fingers of the South China Sea.
To give and take a little
From the ancient seed-bank of spores and ideas
To graft something from East and West here at hand
To lend to grow across the trellis of Tolo gardens
Do Sylvia's friends and family fondly make this small gift
Like loaves and fishes by faith has multiplied
So that ever young gardeners will gather gladly here
And cultivate our next verdant forests of learning.  |
The event climaxed with the "IEd Kitchen". Two to a team, HKIEd staff cooked up a storm in the "kitchen" in a bid to raise more funds. The results : the Most Delicious Dish Award went to Prof Phillip Moore, Associate Vice President (Curriculum and Quality Assurance) and Ms Rosanna Tsoi, Assistant Registrar, Faculty of Languages, Arts and Science for their "seafood fried rice" and "strawberry terrine"; the Highest Donation Award and the Best Presentation Award both went to Mrs Carol Tang, Dean of Students, and Miss Karen Cheung, Executive Officer of the Registry for their "Smiling Golden Chinese Doughnut" which brought in almost $48,000 alone; the Best Team Spirit Award went to Prof Trevor Bond, head of the Department of Education Psychology, Counselling and Learning Needs, and Mrs Bond, for their handmade pasta as well as their imaginative appearance as James Bond and his latest "Bond Girl", as they worked with the Bond theme playing in the background.
