Opening Speech by Head of RS
Prof. Leung, Prof Shum, guests, teachers, students, ladies and gentlemen:
Many thanks for joining this Inauguration Ceremony for the academic year 2018-2019. This is my second time standing on this stage to give the opening address for this ceremony.
Today, my heart is full of excitement. This is because we have achieved so much in the last academic year under the orchestrated efforts of both the teachers and the students that I simply cannot wait but to share with you. This is also to let the newly admitted PT and OT students know that they have made the correct decision to enroll into our two flagship undergraduate programmes at Department of Rehabilitation Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Untill now, we are still the ONLY UGC funded university that offers professional training to both occupational therapists and physiotherapists in Hong Kong. Currently our admission numbers are 100 for the OT programme and 130 for the PT programme. Due to the increasing societal needs, the PT programme will begin to admit 150 students in the next triennimum from 2019 to 2022.
For the past decade, the mean admission scores of our PT students have consistently been ranked the top among the 50 undergraduate programmes at PolyU. There is no exception for this year that the score stood at 34.5. Whereas for the OT side, the admission scores of our students have consistently been ranked either 2nd or 3rd depending on how the admission score was calculated. In this year, the mean admission score for the OT students is 33.1. More excitingly, the PT programme has admitted one student who was referred by the local newspaper as one of the “狀元” or “top scorers”. She had scored 5** in 5 subjects. To respect the student, I am NOT going to announce her name here. This top student, together with a group of students for both the PT and OT programmes, had DSE scores higher than 37. According to the press release, the threshold admission score to MBBS at HKU is 37. This means that these students should be able to be admitted to the medical school in HKU. However, they told me that their interest is not in medicine but rehabilitation. One PT top scorer told me that she opted PT because she likes sports very much and wants to offer PT service to those who are injuried in sport activities. One OT top scorer told me she opted OT because she did not want to work in hospital but community where she may develop more long-lasting helping relationship with the clients. These noble decisions of our students are highly appreciated. They do not follow the “crowd” but their own preferences. I am sure and want to tell Prof. Leung from HKU that we will be offering very high quality PT and OT graduates to work with our high quality medical doctors in Hong Kong. This is extremely important nowadays given the increasingly popular concept of client-centered approach and multi-disciplinary teamwork within the healthcare context.
Other than admission scores, we have reasons to be proud of our students winning many international awards. Just to mention a few of them.
- A group of OT students who won the Gold Award in the 11th International Convention on Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology (or simply refer to be i-Create 2017) in Japan. The winning product is called “Roller clother”. Because of the award, the students were invited by our Chief Executive, Ms Carrie Lam, to the Government House on the 1st of July this year for a commendation party. The product received high level of attention by the senior officials in the Government House. We received recommendation by Mr. Lau Kwong Wah, Secretary for Home Affairs, for the students to apply for matching grant under the “Young Development Fund” scheme in his Bureau.
- This year, another group of OT students won the Silver Award in the I-CREATE in Shanghai. The product is called “FallessflopFallessflop FallessflopFallessflop FallessflopFallessflop Fallessflop”.
- Third, a PT student won the Best Project Award from the Occupational Safety & Health Council.
- Last but not the least, another PT student won a special prize in the international piano contest in Japan earlier this year. All of the above shows that our students are talented in different aspects apart from academic achievement and our educational approach aligns well with the development of “all-rounded” students.
For the past year, our academic staff had impressive results in their scholarly achievements.
- First, Mr Angus Law obtained the Young Investigator Award from European Stroke Research Foundation in the 27th Europe Stroke Conference.
- Dr Andy Cheng won the 'Most Innovative Award” and the Gold Award of the 'Best Quality Award of the Force Research Scheme under the Hong Kong Police Force.
- Dr Billy So received the Faculty Prize in Teaching for Outstanding Performance/Achievement in Teaching 2016/17.
- Finally, Prof. Margaret Mak was appointed Endowed Fellow with the donation from Shun Hing and myself was appointed the Endowed Professor with the donation from Cally Kwong Mei Wan. We are very thankful of the senior management of the university as this has been the first Endowed Professor in RS since the scheme was in place six years ago.
At the departmental level, we also did extremely well in donation.
- We have already received 5 million from various sources including 1 million from Mr Tang Wai Keung and family, and 4.7 million from Keswick foundation. Together with the 16 million which has been confirmed verbally, we have a total of 21 million of donation for this year. I am grateful to Dr Amy Fu and Dr Kenneth Fong for their help in making the donations under the pipeline.
- In external grants, we did very well, with multiple sources of fund received including ECS and GRF from RGC, HMRF, HCPF, ITF, QEF, The Hong Kong Institute of Occupational Rehabilitation Research, and other sources. Among these funding schemes, we did extremely well in ITF, with six projects funded for a total amount of approximately 6 million.
We are now celebrating the 40th Anniversary of RS. All of the above achievements are gifts to RS at its 40th birthday. Since the Inauguration Ceremony in Feb 2018, we have already had numerous activities for the celebration which included four Elite Graduate Seminars, The Summer School, RS Got Talent, and the Football competition. On the 17th Nov, we will be having our Gala Dinner and the 11th Pan-Pacific Conference for Rehabilitation from 17 to 18 Nov which may be regarded as the climax for our celebration.
Students, I am very happy to announce that after this ceremony you will officially become members of this family of RS and share our achievements as reported earlier. As a member of this family, I would like to let you know that you have some obligations.
First, you should study hard to excel yourself academically in the undergraduate programmes so that you will be graduating as competitive graduates in the job market.
In the coming four years, I also hope that you will develop yourself to be become a critical thinker, leader, life-long learner, and a responsible citizen. I do not want other people to label our students as “bookworms”.
Third, I want all of you to participate in as many extra-curricular activities as possible and serve as the ambassador for RS in PolyU.
Finally, I want all of you to regard either OT or PT as your life-long career so that you need to find every way to improve your standard of practice in the future.
Before I pass my time to Prof. Gabriel Leung, I wish all of you happy teaching, learning, and researching in the coming academic year.
Professor Hector Tsang
Cally Kwong Mei Wan Professor in Psychosocial Health
Professor and Head
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
