School News

The Faculty Teaching Award Scheme recognises and rewards teachers with outstanding achievements and significant contributions in teaching and student learning in the Faculty. The award-winners for the academic year 2019-20 are:

Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Undergraduate Teaching)

Dr. Tak Huang
Assistant Professor

“I believe that effective teaching involves providing a challenging but supportive learning experience for students. Students may not like challenges, but they often learn better from their own mistakes as they try to handle the challenges in their learning. As teachers, we may support students’ learning by guiding them to solve the problems on their own and providing ample feedback to facilitate this process. In this way, students not only have a better grasp of the disciplinary knowledge but also are empowered with confidence in their own ability to take up whatever challenges they may encounter in their life.”

Mr. David Lee
Principal Lecturer

“Teaching remains a humbling experience for me, but I’m always grateful for the opportunity to teach great students and to be supported by and work with wonderful colleagues. During these turbulent times, I’ve been reminded of the positive impact that we can still have through our teaching even though we are limited in how we interact with our students. As I’ve reflected on this responsibility, I’ve realized in many ways that teachers are leaders, and collectively we have an opportunity to increase both our teaching and leadership agility to better serve our students. It has been meaningful to be on this learning journey with students as we learn to navigate this new landscape together.

And perhaps because of the current challenges, I am acutely aware, even more than previous years, of the privilege it is in my life to teach at HKU.”

Professor Xin Wang
Professor

“The accounting profession has faced significant challenges in the recent years with the technology advancement. It is not surprising that students often raise concerns about whether the financial accounting knowledge is still useful to foster problem-solving skill and how the accounting courses can enhance students’ knowledge suitable for the new era of big data. To ensure students’ learning experience in my course, my first goal is to engage students in learning by clarifying that our accounting system has been developing together with the changes in the modern society and that the role of accounting knowledge has never been weakened and instead become more important in all aspects of the modern economy. For various accounting topics, I make lectures very efficient by focusing on the fundamental concepts with intuitive examples of the real life. In addition, I emphasize the evolvement of accounting rules because I see the necessity to let students know that our accounting profession embraces the developments in other disciplines including economics, finance and even computer engineering. I often use the example of the change in the accounting rules for the capitalization of R&D costs for software industry.

The second goal of my teaching is to help students become smart users of financial information. Many students have an impression of accounting being “boring”. My tactic is to teach them to dig out useful information from those seemingly boring accounting data. Once students realize that accounting data is a gold mine for financial analysis and investment decisions, they are incentivized to exert efforts on the learning of accounting subjects.

Overall, I strive for excellence in teaching. My efforts on the two teaching goals seem to work very well for students’ learning experience in my course. I am happy to share my insights with you.”

Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Postgraduate Teaching)

Dr. Sammy Fung
Principal Lecturer

“It is my great pleasure to serve as a lecturer in the Business School at HKU over the past decade. My teaching practice has always revolved around two major focuses. First, “learn how to think” – I aspire to create a learning environment that fosters not only students’ technical knowledge, but also their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Second, “learn to learn” – I encourage students to become self-directed learners and problem solvers, engage their curiosity towards the material presented and take that curiosity to the next level by discovering new possibilities and new aspects in their daily lives. I strongly believe that inspiring students for lifelong learning which can lead them to achieve a successful career and contribute to the society in the future. ”

Professor Jin Li
Professor

“As an economist, my approach to teaching is based on demand and supply. On the demand side, I listen to students and illustrate concepts and principles using examples they find interesting. This way, students become more engaged and find the class easier to follow. On the supply side, I focus on topics linked to my research expertise. This makes me a more enthusiastic and effective teacher. But demand and supply aside, there is also trust. I trust our students and design the class to empower them. I trust myself to experiment with new material and topics. Trust makes teaching fun and dynamic. ”

Dr. Rujing Meng
Principal Lecturer

“I love teaching. I always teach from the bottom of my heart. As to teaching philosophy, I deeply believe in the importance of teachers’ passion in teaching and genuinely care about students in achieving effective learning. With sincere love for teaching and students, I adopt student-centered approach to course and programme design and advocate learning-by-doing in helping students achieve meaningful learning outcomes.

I am glad to make a difference in students’ learning. A student commented, “She can always explain concepts clearly. Her teaching style makes me feel inspired in a way that I am eager to learn more about the financial world. She is definitely one of the best professors in FBE.” I will strive to continue making a positive impact on students’ learning and life.”

Faculty Teaching Innovation Award

Dr. Matthias Buehlmaier
Principal Lecturer

“To support students and guide them, I use technology to create a community in which students can interact and learn from each other, ultimately fostering a form of social learning. To facilitate the creation of a community, I use a new app called “Yocle,” whose basic idea can be summarized as being a social media app for teaching and learning. I am pioneering its use at HKU Business School with the goal of discovering whether it can successfully be used in business education. It is a new app and I was one of the few people using it at the beginning at HKU, with the goal of making myself very approachable to students. I was very fortunate to be invited to present at several workshops at the Centre for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and, together with Dr. Cecilia Chan, have created an introductory video about Yocle available on YouTube. Overall, I am deeply grateful for the generous support, mentoring, and encouragement received over the years at HKU Business School and CETL; without them it would not have been possible to receive the inaugural Faculty Teaching Innovation Award.”