What motivated a Singaporean girl with two degrees earned in the United States and 7-year work experience in Singapore to come to Hong Kong and start an academic odyssey in the EdUHK? Vivien Tang, a student of the Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM) program, has a lot to say.
Vivien Tang, student of Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM)[/caption] Born and raised up in Singapore, Vivien owns an enviable CV. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University at Buffalo and obtained her first master’s degree at Canisius College, a renowned liberal arts college in the US. Later on, she returned to Singapore and began her career. Encouraged by her family, Vivien was determined to step out of her comfort zone, and eventually decided to return to campus after seven years of social work services and professional research. She chose the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) to embark on a fascinating journey in the world of public policy here at the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS).
Vivien Tang, a studious, ambitious, but down-to-earth Singaporean girl, delightedly shares her study path at the EdUHK.
Tell us more about your academic background
After I received my first master’s degree at Canisius College, I returned to my hometown-- Singapore. During the master’s study, my career plan was to become a teacher, but then I gradually discovered my deep interest in research. Back to Singapore, I worked for two years in a university devoted to serving children with special needs. After that, I worked in a research center for one year. In this soul-searching period, I gradually developed my future goals. I have worked in the Fei Yue Community Services, a noted social work institution in Singapore, for more than two years. I was engaged in research on community services and social work. The recipients of our services ranged from children to the elderly. I have benefited tremendously from my job at Fei Yue. My supervisor took great care of me and provided me with generous opportunities for professional development. The two years of research experience have sharpened my insight and cultivated my spirit of being down to earth. Always looking forward to new challenges, I was eager to explore the vast ocean of knowledge. Encouraged by my family, I eventually went ahead and started my second master’s adventure in Hong Kong.
Why brought you to the MPPM Program at EdUHK?
When I was planning for my second master study, the first consideration was distance! As an ethnic Chinese, I’m very much a ‘family person’. I have a 98-year old grandfather and I lost much family time when studying in the US. The short distance between Hong Kong and Singapore, along with the excellent academic environment here, made Hong Kong the obvious choice. My professional life has given me a strong desire to do meaningful things for the betterment of the society. The field of social policy has inspired me enormously. By chance, I participated in a workshop at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The speaker was Dr Alex He Jingwei, the Associate Head of the APS Department. After the conference, Dr He shared with me his doctoral experience at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and he warmly invited me to apply for the MPPM program at EdUHK. Dr He’s encouragement strengthened my determination to embark on a study at here.
Your impression of EdUHK
“How to make this place a better place” is the motto that always inspires me. The MPPM program at EdUHK offers exactly what I was longing for. The study here has strengthened my academic training in policy analysis, organizational behavior analysis, public sector management and development, and so forth, and has also cultivated my practical ability in public policy and management. The APS Department has a strong faculty. More importantly, professors are willing to nurture the future talents by providing them with best research opportunities without any reservation. Dr He, my supervisor, invited me to join his research project funded by the World Health Organization’s Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. He offered me lots of opportunities and suggestions on my own research. Two of our research papers are currently under review in leading SSCI journals. He is a great source of inspiration and mentorship in my study journey. When he knew that I had plans to pursue a PhD degree, Dr He enthusiastically shared his own academic experience with me, offering many helpful suggestions, which built up my confidence and allowed me to try and explore the unknown. Dr Isabella Ng Fung-sheung, another Associate Head of the APS Department, is sister-like professor. We have a very close relationship and often hang out together. She makes me and other international students feel at home in Hong Kong, so we never feel alone under the foreign sky. As the founder of the Hong Kong Society for Asylum-Seekers and Refugees, Dr Ng devotes herself to the noble enterprise of social charity services. She often invites students to join volunteer services to help disadvantaged groups in the city. I volunteered in the distribution of relief supplies to the underprivileged people during the difficult time of Covid-19. Dr Lina Vyas, the Program Leader of MPPM, is a helpful and caring professor. I will discuss with Lina when I get any questions about the program.
Share with us your life at EdUHK
The academic atmosphere of EdUHK is exceptional. Coming from very diverse backgrounds, my classmates share many interesting stories about their hometown. In the spare time before the pandemic, we often explored Hong Kong cuisine together and enjoyed the countryside. The classroom atmosphere of APS is particularly harmonious. When courses cover the case of Singapore, I was often invited as guest speaker. This made me very proud.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced universities in Hong Kong to switch teaching to the online mode. Thanks to the sufficient resources that EdUHK has deployed, online teaching has not adversely affected us. The fantastic location of EdUHK makes it a paradise in Hong Kong. At the time of the ever-changing pandemic, looking at the lush greenery outside the window, my mood gradually turns good.
We are delighted to announce that Prof CK Woo, Professor at APS, has been awarded a Gold Medal with his project corporate with Dr. So Chi-Fuk (Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, EdUHK), “Online Assessment System for Individual Scores (OASIS)” at the 2020 IIIC International Innovation competition.
The Online Assessment System for Individual Scores (OASIS) is a suitably designed assessment method for team projects should ex ante discourage free-riding before project commencement and ex post punish free-riders when such behavior is found to exist upon project completion. The OASIS has been implemented by 28 teachers and ~1,800 across nine universities in the U.S., Hong Kong, mainland China, and India. The results find that OASIS encourages student participation in a team project through its contractual commitment and performance-based scoring method. Second, it can detect free-riding in a team project. Third, OASIS uses the peer to fairly scores individual contributions by members of a team project. Finally, it is user-friendly and benefits students, teachers, and university management. Based on the current users’ positive feedback, his team expects that an increasing number of using OASIS in the coming academic years. It will benefit another ~1,000 students from 4 universities in the future. Besides, a newly signed commercial user (Goabroad Limited) indicates OASIS’s applicability beyond higher education institutes, thus underscoring this TDG project’s knowledge transfer to the business sector.
IIIC is a renowned event of innovations in the Greater China Region, attracting over 400 innovations from all over the countries including Asia, US, and European countries, every year. The results illustrate the creativity and applicability of Prof Woo's innovations in integrating technologies to enrich educational experiences. APS looks forward to seeing OASIS can become a useful peer assessment method with worldwide impact.
Some 40 million people have been infected by the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide so far, resulting in over 1.1 million deaths. Apart from creating a severe public health crisis, the pandemic has also caused serious social and economic disruptions. Government capacity and leadership in crisis management is under major test in different countries and territories, and performance varies. Where does Hong Kong stand compared to others? Have government strategies, policy priorities and remedial measures been on the right track? What problems and deficiencies have been exposed? What lessons can be learned?
In this new semester, we are happy to have Dr Stuti Rawat, joining the Department of Asian and Policy Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, as a Post-doctoral Fellow. Stuti will be working on her own research projects and collaborating with colleagues on exciting studies related to public trust, online teaching and social capital. She will be expanding her teaching portfolio by teaching undergraduate courses on the Strategic Management of Non-Profit Organizations and the Foundations of Policy Science and Public Management, as well as hosting workshops for Masters’ students related to academic writing and research. 
Stuti earned her PhD degree from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at The National University of Singapore (NUS), earlier this year. Her doctoral research lies at the intersection of public policy and development. Her dissertation adopts a quantitative approach to address the twin questions of what motivates governments to spend on the agriculture sector and what the impact is (on food security and agricultural productivity), when they actually do. For her doctoral research, she received the Musim Mas Sustainability Dissertation Award, a prestigious award conferred to candidates who show exceptional accomplishment in conducting dissertation research in the area of sustainability.
Stuti’s interest in the agriculture sector was spurred through her experiences working at the International Water Management Institute and The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) as a Consultant and Research Associate. Witnessing the centrality of agriculture in rural lives in a lower-middle-income country like India, impressed upon her the role that well-designed public policies can play in effecting change on multiple fronts. Her research goal is to generate evidence on the impact of policies, while developing an understanding of the policy-making process and the behavior of policy targets. Adopting this lens, in addition to agriculture, Stuti has worked on topics related to water, climate change, behavioural change, natural disasters and public administration.
In the past, Stuti has worked as a Consultant for the World Bank in Singapore, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal, The Vittorio Dan Segre Foundation (remotely) and most recently for the University of Cambridge – serving as an Expert for the ASEAN Development Outlook Report of the ASEAN Secretariat.
Although, Stuti grew up in Delhi and completed all her education prior to the PhD here, she has a close connect to the mountains. She was born in Sikkim and traces her roots to the state of Uttarakhand in India, both of which are mountainous states in the Himalayas. This makes EduHK extra special for her; she loves the serenity of the campus and the rollicking green hills that surround it. Stuti is looking forward to a post-pandemic world when she can meet students in person and enjoy time together discussing matters of common interest such as teaching, research, tennis and music.
Since 1997, the implementation of 'one country, two systems' has been subject to test in major controversies especially over national security and constitutional issues. Post-national security law, the optimists hope for the end of disorder and arrival of a 'second transition' while the pessimists worry about the erosion of the city's autonomy and freedom. Apart from growing tensions and fatigue between the 'two systems', Hong Kong's political future also faces new turbulence and uncertainty because of escalating US-China conflict. Can the 'two systems' framework still work in the changing circumstances where past assumptions no longer apply?
We are delighted to welcome two colleagues to the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong, including Lecturer Mr Tommy Kwan, and Post-doctoral Fellow Dr Stuti Rawat. First, we will introduce to you, Mr Tommy Kwan.
Before joining the Department of Asian and Policy Studies
Tommy obtained his bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences (Governance and Public Administration) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2015, Then he decided to pursue his Master’s studies in Politics of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at SOAS, University of London. His research interests have been established during his Bachelor’s studies, focusing on the politics in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which extends to contentious politics, party politics, and candidate selection. As the most mature representative of the development of political parties in greater China Region, Taiwan's political parties have always been the most concerned topic when scholars talk about Chinese politics, which is one of the main reasons why he, as a Hong Kong man, studied Taiwan in the UK.
His two alma maters, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and SOAS at the University of London, are well-known leftist schools. In his published book, The Loneliness Class, he said that students at the "left-leaning School of Oriental and African Studies" enjoyed taking part in protest marches. The cultural environment inevitably affects people, but this effect is not all radical, and it may be a critical way of thinking, which is a positive influence. Whether in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or other parts of the world, social movements and party struggles are very "big" or hot topics this year. This is also consistent with Professor Kwan's doctoral dissertation on the relationship between political parties and social movements in Taiwan.
Tommy was a visiting scholar at the University of Tübingen in Germany and Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He said that the experience from Hong Kong to Britain to Germany to Taiwan, and finally back to Hong Kong was an experience of growing in a different and diversified academic atmosphere. Unlike his undergraduate years, Tommy, a graduate student, has become more involved in purely academic research. He mentioned that one of the most impressive things about studying in the UK was that the Taiwan Studies Centre at SOAS held several events every week, inviting different scholars, with no restriction on the theme. He also said that due to local limitations, many Hong Kong students do not have much mobility. But during the years since he left Hong Kong to study abroad after his undergraduate studies, he has gained the ability to be independent.
Future Plans in EdUHK
In the new semester, Tommy will be teaching two Year 1 courses, as well as completing his doctoral thesis.
In the new semester, when the epidemic has become the new normal, he feels sorry that he could not meet and teach the students in Face-to-Face mode. Meanwhile, online teaching has also brought him challenges. But there is no doubt that this will not affect his way of getting along with the students as friends. In addition to providing academic guidance, he also hopes he can chat with students about life on campus and offers help when necessary. As for APS, just like the freshmen, he is new to the school. He hopes that teachers and students can encourage each other and adapt to the new environment as soon as possible.
Of course, Tommy also has some expectations for his students. On the one hand, students should not only attend classes, but also enjoy their school life, cherish the short and precious time, and dare to try different new things. On the other hand, students should keep in mind their duty as students and never give up studying.