Over 130 new students, faculty and staff join the IPO Welcome Party 2016 on 9 Sep 2016 which is the first year that IPO admits both Year 1 students through program-based admission and Year 2 students through major selection exercise.

Prof. King L. CHOW, Director of IPO, gave a warm welcome to all new students and explained the advantage of studying interdisciplinary curriculum and how students will benefit from it.  Prof. Jimmy FUNG, Head of Division of Environment, Prof. Betty LIN, Associate Director of T&M-DDP, Prof. Xianhua PENG, Co-director of RMBI, Dr. Jiying WANG, UG Coordinator of RMBI and Prof. Arthur LAU, Co-director of EVMT also joined Prof. CHOW to welcome the students. 

IPO took this opportunity to present the IPO Outstanding Community Service Awards to awardees of 2015/16 to recognize their outstanding contributions to community service. The three awardees are: David QI, T&M-DDP Year 3 student, who devoted in serving both left-behind children in Jiangxi Province at China and hearing impaired children in Hong Kong; Charles WONG, RMBI Year 4 student, who actively participated in various community services from promoting “Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violation” to serving elderly and rehabilitated youths in Hong Kong; and Carmen CHEUNG, EVMT Year 4 student, who committed over 260 service hours in helping the needy in Hong Kong, China and even Cambodia.

To earmark the year students join the IPO family, we made a Time Capsule together.  Students wrote down their expectations to university life and plan for their future on the activity sheets.  Their answers will be kept in the Time Capsules and returned to them at their congregations. By the time they leave HKUST, they may review if they have achieved what they wanted and expected, and whether their goals have changed.

After all the ceremonial formalities, students got to know each other by playing mass games and this wonderful evening was concluded by delicious dinner buffet.