Engagement Stories - Community Engagement

FICPI South East Asian Drafting (SEAD) Training Course

A patent application starts with drafting a claim submission. It requires not only knowledge of the invention, but also good language skills and legal knowledge. The Fédération Internationale des Conseils en Propriété Industrielle (FICPI; 'International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys' in English) has developed a training course on drafting patent specifications, which was launched in Singapore in 1997 and extended to Australia and Europe in 1999.

Bridging Past and Present

A collapsed village bridge may seem like a straightforward repair job, but for the Department of Architecture it turned out to be a great opportunity to engage with a community in re-creating public space.

Before It's Too Late: The Witness to War Project

Hong Kong experienced terrible upheaval in the Second World War but personal accounts of these experiences and the painful choices they involved have been scant. HKU has been working to change that in a unique collaboration with local secondary schools.

Language as Culture

Should language be taught simply as a tool to communicate, or can it be a starting point for deeper cultural explorations? This is a question that concerned the School of Chinese when it saw the government launch the Chinese language curriculum in 2000.

Moving Up the Wage Scale

Hong Kong's economy has undergone a lot of changes over the past 30 years, evolving from a manufacturing city into a global financial centre. How has that affected people's earnings? Are they better off? And what about the people on the lowest rungs of the wage ladder?

Something to Chew On

Tooth decay is an unpleasant experience that we all want to avoid and the Faculty of Dentistry has been educating young people in schools for years on how to do so. But tooth decay is also something else: an example of science in our everyday lives.

Science Inspiration

Science studies in secondary schools can be pretty ordinary – read the textbooks, listen to the teacher, watch the teacher do the experiment. But the Junior Science Institute (JSI) is showing students there is a lot more to a subject that relates very much to their daily lives.

A Culture Change

Knowledge exchange is not a new thing at HKU. It has simply been brought out into the light and given its proper status as one of three prongs – the others being education and research – that define our mission. If we do not share our knowledge with industry and society, and create ties with the community so our students have more opportunities to learn, we are not making the most of our work.

A Creative Way to Share

The creation of a new work inevitably gives rise to the issue of ownership. And in today's digital world, where sharing expands the impact of a work, ''ownership'' can be a complicated matter.