Feb 3
HKUMed Celebrates 135th Anniversary With a Sense of Gratitude
From new buildings to art exhibitions to a series of lectures, HKUMed celebrated its 135th anniversary over 2022 with a variety of events highlighting the Faculty’s rich history.
Based around the theme “Building Dreams, Realising Possibilities”, the celebrations focused on HKUMed’s achievements in medical science and the investments underway to support future breakthroughs.
The LKS Faculty of Medicine grew from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, which was founded in 1887 to train doctors. It was later incorporated into the University of Hong Kong in 1912, becoming its first faculty.
To mark the anniversary, HKUMed organised a broad range of activities to appeal to different members of the community.
And despite the challenges brought by the COVID-19 situation in Hong Kong, the mixture of in-person and virtual events provided ample opportunity to share the Faculty’s milestones.
The first in a series of Dean’s Lectures kicked off the in-person events in May, inviting Professor Wang Chen, President of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, to deliver the opening lecture. This was followed by three further Dean’s Lectures by global leaders to discuss the challenges of modern healthcare.
Building Dreams, Realising Possibilities
In a direct nod to the anniversary’s theme, July saw the opening of the New Academic Building at 3 Sassoon Road. The building provides a new home for the School of Nursing and School of Chinese Medicine, allowing the Faculty to train larger numbers of healthcare workers.
A little further down Sassoon Road, the Faculty also celebrated the opening of a new building to house its administrative staff. The addition allowed the Faculty to free up space for teaching and learning in the William MW Mong Block.
Separately, an art exhibition titled “Medicine and Healthcare Through the Lens of Digital Art” highlighted how HKUMed has supported researchers to realise possibilities.
The exhibition’s digital art drew inspiration from leading scientific breakthroughs at HKUMed, from the “Hong Kong Operation” to rare diseases and the battle against infectious diseases.
In addition to the digital art exhibition, a gallery of Dean’s Portraits was revealed in July to honour the leaders who have shaped HKUMed.
For those looking for a permanent memento of HKUMed’s 135th anniversary, alumni and members of the HKUMed community were invited to bid for limited edition HKUMed chairs. Each pair of chairs was marked with a year from HKUMed’s history, with the design marrying elements from East and West along with academic traditions.
As the celebrations drew to a close, a Thanksgiving Dinner was held in October to acknowledge the generous support of the local community that has sustained HKUMed for more than a century.
Guests gathered across three locations to celebrate HKUMed’s achievements and to thank donors for their unstinting support.
“COVID has brought us unprecedented challenges, but at the same time, it gives us a lot of room to think outside the box, about new developments and directions to maintain our teaching and learning pursuits, to excel in our research endeavours, as well as to serve the community with humility,” Professor CS Lau, Dean of Medicine, told attendees at the dinner.
Before the celebrations ended, a final in-person event in January 2023 invited alumni and members of the public to join a walking tour to learn about the Faculty’s evolution. Starting at the site of the College’s first building, participants ended the tour at the current Sassoon Road Campus where they interacted with the technologies used to teach the healthcare workers of the future.
