Many higher education institutions
around the world have come to realize that classroom education and education
outside the classroom should complement each other, that both professional
expertise (hard skills) and liberal arts general education (soft skills) are
indispensable in nurturing university students in this new era, and that a new
mode of education requires the perfect balance.
That’s why renowned universities attach great importance to student affairs via
living and learning experiences. The educational function of student affairs is
continuously expanding as the University of Macau (UM) attaches great
importance to education outside the classroom. In 2008 after Prof. Wei Zhao
took office as the rector, UM launched a new “4-in-1” education model, which
aims to implement whole person education through the combination of
discipline-specific education, general education, research and internship
education, and community and peer education. Such an education model not only
strengthens students’ hard skills, but also helps students to develop – through
community and peer education anchored in a residential college (RC) system –
soft skills such as optimism, team spirit, effective communication, sense of
responsibility, empathy, ability to exercise sound moral judgment, and lifelong
learning, etc..
The rapid development of UM is placing higher demands on student affairs work.
After the new campus on Hengqin Island is put into use, an RC system will be
fully implemented. This inevitably requires the training of a large number of
outstanding student affairs professionals. Therefore, UM recently created two senior positions responsible
for student affairs: Vice Rector for Student Affairs, and Dean of Students. The
former is held by Prof. Haydn Chen, who has rich experience in higher education
management, and the latter is held by Dr. Peter Yu, who has over twenty years
of experience in student affairs. Additionally, in May 2012 UM established
Asia’s first-ever Macau Student Affairs Institute, and invited top-notch
student affairs and education experts from across the globe to provide an
advanced training course. In this issue of umagazine,
we invited Prof. Haydn Chen and Dr. Peter Yu to discuss from different
perspectives how UM plans to help students acquire and improve soft skills, as
well as how UM will enhance student management. We also interviewed some
participants of the training course to learn what new understanding of student
affairs they have gained from the course.
Haydn Chen: Character Is More Important
Conventional classroom education, which
focuses on imparting specialty knowledge, tends to be valued more readily,
partly because knowledge is quantifiable and is aimed at educating students in
specific skills. Education outside the classroom in the domain of general or
whole person education, however, is a totally different matter, in that it is
open-ended, requires more time and space, deals with a diverse range of issues,
and has no fixed teaching methods or textbooks. The lack of a textbook and
examinations makes it difficult to quantify and measure the outcome of this
kind of education. But the tricky thing is that skills which normally can only
be acquired through such education are greatly valued by society. For instance,
many multinational companies hiring interns look for communication skills,
analytical and problem-solving ability, interpersonal effectiveness, team
spirit, a global mindset, self-education and motivation, mood management, and
leadership potential.
After the new campus is put into use next year, between eight and twelve RCs
will be established, forming the largest RC system in Asia. When that happens,
students will be able to enjoy a richer campus life. The RC system will be a
perfect complement to the faculty system. Each RC will be inhabited by
approximately five hundred people. Students of different majors, years of study
and ethnicity will live and learn together and from one another. Living and
dining together in the same RCs will give staff and students ample
opportunities to interact and make each RC into a multi-disciplinary learning
community. What’s Prof. Haydn Chen’s opinion on soft skills acquisition and the
RC system to be implemented on the new UM campus in the near future? And what
plans does he have in these two areas?
J:
Journalist
C: Prof. Haydn Chen
J:
What kinds of people are most needed in the twenty-first century? How
can UM meet the needs of the developing society?
C: People most needed by the
twenty-first century should possess the following skills and traits: (1)
excellent learning ability, (2) passion for service, (3) a global mindset, (4)
practical ability, (5) multifaceted intelligence, (6) internalised liberal arts
knowledge and caring about humanity, and (7) a positive outlook on life.
Nowadays we often hear complaints about university students’ poor attitude as
well as their lack of passion, action, cooperativeness and stress-handling
skills. These actually have little to do with which major subject they chose to
study at college. These are personality traits, and the development of these
traits is exactly the purpose of liberal arts education. In the last century,
universities tended to focus on imparting professional expertise, with greater
emphasis on science subjects than on the humanities, with priority on training
specialists instead of generalists. But liberal arts education aims to help
every student become an independent agent of free will rather than a slave to
his knowledge, because a person full of knowledge in his head without
independent analysis of the knowledge is nothing more than a robot. Towards the
end of the twentieth century, universities came to realise that education
should be learning-outcome-based, and so they began to attach more importance
to multi-disciplinary education that stresses a balance between science
subjects and the humanities. This is at the core of education in the
twenty-first century. The “4-in-1” education model implemented at UM aims,
first and foremost, to help students become people of action, people with good
character traits and values and compassion, and people who can contribute to a
team. Only then can they truly make valuable contributions to society.
J: What role does student affairs work
play in helping students develop soft skills?
C: The modern view of higher education
stresses integrated, multi-disciplinary education, which includes liberal arts
education (or soft skills education) in addition to discipline-specific (hard
skills) education. And in this respect, the Student Affairs Office (SAO) can
and should play an important role. SAO should go beyond its service function
and become a teaching unit or even a platform for soft skills acquisition. All
SAO colleagues have a responsibility to educate students. We have set our goals
in terms of helping students develop soft skills, and with that goal in mind,
we will design some core capability indices. By way of various courses and
activities, UM will help students reach those core indices.
J: Why is character education important
for students?
C: People with professional expertise
but without good character can cause great disasters to the world. For example,
a lawyer who flouts laws, a businessman with no moral scruples. Although
expertise and character are both very important, I think the latter is more
important from the point of view of bringing benefits to humankind. Character
traits have to do with internalised liberal arts knowledge and caring about
humanity, and this is beyond the realm of specialty knowledge acquisition. So
how do we cultivate these character traits? The answer is through education
that starts at an early age. A person who likes to explore and experiment is
bound to have a broader perspective. Therefore, it is very important for
universities to help students to develop initiative to learn, and equip them
with various soft skills. We need to
help students develop various skills and traits, including endurance,
cooperation, observance of rules, honesty, resilience against setbacks, a
caring heart, communication skills, good values, team spirit, an