Teacher-student ties
Lingnan chief to
breakfast with students

By Carol Ko
     Prof. Edward Kwan Yiu Chen, president of Lingnan College, recently announced plans to breakfast with all his students. Following are his reflections on the objectives of these breakfast meetings and their significance to Lingnan Culture:

     Courtesy of Prof. Chen
     Q: Are you planning to have breakfast with all the students at Lingnan College? Can you tell us more?
     A: Our mission is to become a liberal arts college of international standing.
     To achieve this, there must be close student-teacher ties.
     So, with breakfast meetings, students can freely voice their opinions.
     There should be about 10 students each time. Every meeting will last an hour, and there will be three mornings per week. In this case, each student will have one and a half breakfast meetings with me on average during their three-year college life.
     Q: Can you explain more about what liberal education is?
     A: The importance of liberal arts education is its stress on all-round, whole person education.
     It also emphasizes the development of a broad mind and teaches students how to learn and how to think.
     Q: When will you start the breakfast meetings with the students?
     A: I haven’t started it yet. Although we have been planning this for a long time and have told our students about this, the president’s lodge is still not ready. I expect it will start in early January. I regret the delay in the completion of the lodge.
     Q: What is “Lingnan Culture”?
     A: Lingnan Culture is a long tradition which puts much emphasis on collegiality, which means unity.
     “Lingnan is a big family” is our motto. Lingnan Culture can be traced back to the establishment of the university in Guangzhou in 1888.
     At that time, many students lived in hostels with teachers. This built a sense of belonging and unity.
     In a word, Lingnan Culture is that students share the same values and vision in unison. Such a culture can only be achieved in a small-scale college.
     Q: How can Lingnan Culture be of use to the students?
     A: Students become more united. As we exist in such a harmonious atmosphere, students can learn in a more relaxed environment.
     Thus, many of the requests they make are answered very often through amicable dialogue.
     Q: Do you think you consciously develop Lingnan Culture?
     A: I don’t think so. But we do preserve the culture consciously.
     The birth and growth of Lingnan Culture has been a natural process. But once it arrived in Hong Kong, we had to prevent it from being lost.
     Q: Are there other measures to enhance teacher-student relationships besides having breakfast meetings?
     A: There are many informal contacts between teachers and students through extra-curricular activities.
     In addition, each student has to work on an individual project which requires much interaction with their teachers.
     Also, it is compulsory for each student to live in hostel for 2 years in order to foster teacher-student ties.
     Q: You often mention that Lingnan College is of a small scale. How small is it actually?
     A: There are only about 2,000 students in Lingnan.
     Also, because the funding of the college by the government depends much on the number of the students, the budget we get is smaller, too.
     Q: Do you want to expand the scale of Lingnan College?
     A: What we want to provide is liberal arts education. We do not want a large number. Two thousand students at present is optimal. Therefore, in the short run, we don’t want expansion. How can I have breakfast with 10,000 students? Therefore, we believe that “small is beautiful”.
     Q: The Pillar of Shame has recently been moved to Lingnan College. What do you think about that?
     A: I think students have freedom of expression.
     As long as they think the erection of the of Pillar of Shame can help them to express themselves, I would let them go ahead.
     We are only worried that it might block the pedestrian flow or whether the loading can support such a huge sculpture.
     As long as the engineers approve, students can do whatever they like to express themselves.
     Q: Why does Lingnan need a longer time to be upgraded?
     A: For some universities, such as the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, it was a university since it was founded. This is because the government wanted such a university.
     But for the two former polytechnics and Baptist University, they had to go through a longer time to be upgraded.
     By the way, we’ll have an institutional review in January 1998. Hopefully, we will achieve (university) status in early 1999.
     Q: Will it be different when Lingnan is upgraded to university status?
     A: No different at all. Basically, Lingnan is not greatly different from other universities. All eight tertiary institutions are having regular meetings and cooperation.
     Q: It is said that Form 7 students tend to give Lingnan lower priority. How will you eliminate this bias when Lingnan receives the university title?
     A: Actually, in other countries such as the U.S., a small-scale liberal arts institution should be called a college instead of a university. The difference between a college and a university lies only in their scale and structure.
     Hong Kong people are not used to this, and so it is not a central issue whether we call Lingnan a college or a university. We have to educate people about what a liberal arts education is.
     When the public is better informed about liberal arts education several years later, Lingnan will have a unique place among the eight institutions.
     Q: Why did you resign the post of the chairman of the Consumer Council?
     A: I had been working in the Council Council more than 10 years. And I spent 6 years working as the chairman.
     There were a lot of things that I wanted to do.
     And I think now is the right time for others to inject new ideas into the Consumer Council. Six years is a very long time. And everyone may see his ideas dry up. So we should let fresh ideas be injected into it.
     Q: Is it worthwhile to invest more than $100 million to construct student hostels?
     A: It is very important. Residence on campus is the crucial factor in realizing liberal arts education. It is also the essential factor in the informal teaching and learning process.
     Distance makes no difference. Even students living in Tuen Mun are supposed to live in hostels at least 2 years.
     If it is possible, we will build more hostels to enable students to live in hostels all 3 years.


 Pilot



January 1998

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