A University Making Unceasing Progress

City University of Macau (CityU), is located on the quiet northern coastal line of Taipa, close to the mountain and sea side. "Thanks to the Macau SAR Government for moving us a few years ago back to our original campus. This is a great support to our university’s development. Now, we have the best precious opportunity ever in our history," said Dr. Li Shuying, the Academic Registrar of City University of Macau.

“CityU sets up its academic programs for Macau and the greater region, based on its long time commitment to serve the local community. The masteral and doctoral degree programs of the Faculty of International Tourism and Management have obtained the first TedQual accreditation in Macau under the United Nations World Tourism Organization (WTO); its bachelor's degree program is also very popular. As the university has already built a number of partnerships globally, the students have lots of opportunities to exchange to world prestige tourism countries such as France, Austria, United States and Australia, as well as paid internship opportunities to work for Disneyland in the U.S. and top-notched hotels. This is indeed a valuable working and living experience for the students.

The Bachelor program of Business Administration (BBA) is another practical and popular program. Students in this program could directly apply to sit in the related exams offered by the British Royal Institute of Chartered Accountants (CIMA) for a CIMA certification and a CGMA title; in addition, students in this program can also be exempted 16 credits from Institute of Management Accountants (ICMA)’s examinations, thus the competitiveness is beyond doubt. In addition, the university’s Applied Psychology program is popular for its unique design which combines the Chinese culture elements with the use of sand table deduction analysis; the Social Work Program is also attractive for its close connectedness with the Macau’s local community and the aging society.”

Dr. Li comments, "Whether a university is attractive or not, depends mainly on three factors. The first one is a good design of academic programs, as these programs are the major products for the university. We consider university as a liberal art university; all programs are for the local and regional development. For example, we have set up the Portuguese-Speaking Countries Research Institute and ‘One Belt, One Road’ Research Center, the only one in Macau, to contribute ideas and thoughts to the country and the region. We have opened the new masteral and doctoral programs in Studies on Portuguese - Speaking Countries. We established the Urban Management Big Data Research Center, to explore Macau's capacity to develop into a smart city. We have also launched masteral and doctoral programs in urban planning and management.

"The second factor is the quality of our programs. Each year, we conduct the student satisfaction survey to collect the students’ feedback on our programs for our future improvement. In this respect, we are actively involved in the institutional quality audit and program accreditation projects pushed forward by the Tertiary Education Service Office. All these are for the continuously improving our program quality.

The third factor is teaching staff, which is an area we are making progress on. Currently more than 80% of our professors have a doctoral degree, and many of our staff have extensive overseas teaching and working experiences. We also send our teachers to go abroad for further studies and trainings to enhance their teaching quality. "

Dr. Li remarked, “City University of Macau has got its name in 2011 and since then, it has determined its role to serve for Macau and the region. Therefore Portuguese language teaching and development has become one of the special characteristics of our university. We have already launched the masteral and doctoral programs in Studies on Portuguese-Speaking Countries. Next year, we will launch a new masteral degree program in Interpretation/Translation Studies Between Chinese, Portuguese and English to meet the need of the human resources in this regard and to further the region’s connection with the Portuguese-Speaking Countries. These programs are very practical and much in need. "

“Currently, we have approximately 90,000 square meters of teaching space. We still do not have enough sports facilities and we are short of our dormitory spaces. Nonetheless, we find the solutions in the sharing and collaboration with other institutions. A good side of this is that it pushes us to use the available facilities more efficiently. “Macau is a very small place, therefore the resources should be used more effectively,” Dr. Li says. “Currently, we need to focus on maintaining the size of the student population, improve the education quality and enhance the university profile.”

資源來源:南華早報教育網