The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has just completed its first ever “Summer Program for High School Students on Global China Studies”. Thirty students from 15 secondary schools were selected to join this 5-day program, which comprised three days of field work in the Nansha District in the Pearl River Delta and two days of data processing and analysis on the HKUST campus.
“Global China Studies is a multi-disciplinary subject that is enjoying increasing popularity, and we at the School of Humanities and Social Science are planning to run our first major program for undergraduate students in the 2010-11 academic year,” said Prof Erik Baark, Acting Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science.
According to Prof Cheung Siu-Woo, Associate Dean of the School, the Summer Program for High School Students on Global China Studies enjoyed immense popularity among senior secondary students. Under the guidance of a number of HKUST professors, the students were divided into four research teams to work on the following topics:
Development of lineage organization and sand field reclamation
Rituals, festivals and popular religion
Urbanization and transformation of administration in rural villages
Global capital and migrant workers
Prof Liu Tik-Sang, Director of the South China Research Center under the School of Humanities and Social Science, said, “The program is highly cooperative and experiential. While we provide the students with the basic research tools for the program, we require them to go on site, observe the environment and interview people. At the end of the program, we were delighted to see that the students have been able to look at Chinese society from a global perspective.”
One of the students said, “After participating in this program, I learned how to understand local people’s life and culture, observe the changes around us, analyze what the interviewees told me, and think about the meanings behind. Moreover, I have learned how to extract usable information from a large amount of collected data and, through processing and analysis, to produce a report.”
For media enquiries, please feel free to contact :
Ross Lai
Tel: 2358 6306 / 9103 2928
Email: rosslai@ust.hk
Donna Wong
Tel: 2358 6317
Email: donnaw@ust.hk
