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No. 96 18 September 2007
 

 

Staff deployed to CCCU will come home
CityU's Council approved on 17 September plans to safeguard continuous employment as CityU staff on superannuable terms for the 112 colleagues deployed to work at the Community College of City University (CCCU), by transferring them to work mainly on top-up programmes at the School of Continuing and Professional Education (SCOPE). The proposal actualizes the University's commitment towards the substantiation system. It will also enable CCCU to operate with a clean slate when it turns completely self-financing on 1 July 2008. Moreover, the university will be relieved from a heavy financial burden.

Council members also approved the establishment of three committees and boards to monitor the transition and help SCOPE grow, namely the Management Committee on the Transition of CCCU Staff to SCOPE, the Board of School of Continuing and Professional Education and the Advisory Committee on School of Continuing and Professional Education.

 

CityU wins key environmental contract
CityU has been awarded a $4.5 million consultancy contract by the Environmental Protection Department of the Government after beating 17 international consultants and local universities in a highly competitive bidding exercise. The two-and-a-half-year project is led by CityU's Professor (Chair) Rudolf Wu Shiu-sun from the Department of Biology and Chemistry and Director of the Centre for Coastal Pollution and Conservation. His team members, from the same department, are Professor (Chair) Lau Tai-chu and Associate Professors Dr Doris Au Wai-ting, Dr Cheung Siu-gin and Dr Paul Shin Kam-shing. This project aims to develop toxicity tests which can predict the environmental consequences of discharging complex effluent into the marine environment.


Parents' Day at CityU
Parents' Day, organized by the University Council's Community Relations Committee, is an ideal opportunity to promote CityU and its quality education to parents of senior secondary school students. Professor Richard Ho Yan-ki, Acting President; Dr Chan Yan-chong, Associate Professor of the Management Science Department and Dr Wong Sing-wing, Associate Professor of the Applied Social Studies Department, will speak at the event, to be held from 7pm to 9pm on Thursday, 27 September 2007 at Wei Hing Theatre.

 

Crisis management team
The Management Board has approved the establishment of the Critical Student Incident Management Team (tentative name) which will coordinate responses to significant situations involving students. The team will be chaired by Professor Lilian Vrijmoed Kwan Lee-ping, Dean of Student Learning.


SDS reorganization
Student Development Services will be restructured to meet the challenges of the growing diversity and size of the student population. Three independent offices ¡X Student Residence Office, International and Non-local Students Office and Career and Internship Office ¡X will be established. The three offices, plus Student Development Services, will report to Professor Lilian Vrijmoed Kwan Lee-ping, Dean of Student Learning. The new structure will take effect from 1 October 2007.


Dress Special Day
Staff and students are invited to take part in Dress Special Day on 25 September. All participants can dress down, dress up, dress special or dress "colour". All donations will be allocated to the Family and Child Welfare Services under the umbrella of the Community Chest. Staff and students can make donations through their general offices or to the Dress Special Day donation boxes located at Cut Price Shop, Photocopying Centre (4/F, Amenities Building) and Student Union counter, from 20 Setpember to 21 September.

 

Annual Aquatic Meet
The 17th CityU Annual Aquatic Meet, organized by the Physical Education Section of Student Development Services and sponsored by the Cultural and Sports Committee, will be held on Saturday, 22 September between 12:30pm and 6pm at the CityU Swimming Pool. All students, full-time staff and their immediate family members are welcome to participate in the various competition categories.

 

Kudos
Dr Bertha Du-Babcock, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Communication, has won the Association of Business Communication 2007 Award for Outstanding Article in The Journal of Business Communication. The article is entitled "An analysis of topic management strategies and turn-taking behaviour in the Hong Kong bilingual environment: the impact of culture and language use". An analysis of the winning article will be featured in a special column of the Business Communication Quarterly. In addition, Dr Du-Babcock has been elected Director-at-Large for the Association for a term of four years, effective 12 October 2007.

A team from the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, together with one other author, has been awarded the 2005 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award (bestowed in 2007). This prestigious award is given to only one paper each year. The team comprises Professor Gary Feng Gang, Associate Professor Dr Sun Dong, and Dr Cailian Chen (a graduate in 2005), and the paper is entitled "H-infinity output feedback control of discrete-time fuzzy systems with application to chaos control". The award will be presented in the coming 2008 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, the largest and best conference in the field. The conference will be held in Hong Kong in June 2008.

 

External appointment
Dr Alan Chan Hoi-shou, Associate Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, has been appointed a member of the Occupational Safety and Health Council for three years, with effect from 22 August 2007.


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