It has been five months since Prof Michael Hui, a renowned marketing scholar, joined the University of Macau (UM) as its vice rector for academic affairs. He assumed office last December, just before the COVID-19 outbreak which has changed the lives of people around the world. During these challenging times, Prof Hui has taken quick steps to further cultivate UM’s core and ‘soul’.
Attracting Outstanding People
Prior to joining UM, Prof Hui worked for more than two decades at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he served in several management positions, including associate vice president and pro-vice-chancellor/vice-president, responsible for the recruitment of many academic staff. He says that excellent faculty members and students are the core and ‘soul’ of a university, and that is why the university has launched the UM Macao Talent Programme, which aims to attract high-calibre people from around the world. ‘To be successful, a university must be able to attract and retain talented people.’ says Prof Hui. ‘When excellent professors evaluate whether they want to join a university, one of their most important considerations is the prospect for their research. So it is important to provide a good environment for teaching and research so that they can concentrate on creating knowledge.’
Stimulating Curiosity about Knowledge
Prof Hui believes that the core mission of higher education is to create and disseminate knowledge. Therefore, to measure the academic level of a university, one should employ not only tangible performance indicators, but also the intangible indicator ‘culture’. ‘For universities to become knowledge hubs, professors and students must have deep respect for, and curiosity about, knowledge, ‘he says.
Prof Hui adds that universities should provide students with space to think and to motivate them to pursue knowledge, which is also one of his goals at UM. He explains, ‘In an era where knowledge quickly becomes obsolete, a university that only focuses on imparting knowledge is making itself less and less valuable. What we teach today may become outdated in two years, so we want to provide full support to our students in their personal growth beyond professional knowledge.’
Throughout his student days and academic career, Prof Hui has always enjoyed his time on campus. What he most wants to say to UM students are: ‘I think college years, especially undergraduate years, are one of the few precious periods of your life where you have a lot of time and freedom to do what you want to do. I think the first question students should ask themselves is “Who am I?” They should take advantage of the freedom of this period to think about important questions such as this and train themselves to become self-driven learners, so they can better prepare for the future.’
Shortly after assuming office at UM, Prof Hui was faced with a challenge: implementing distance education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof Hui says he plans to strengthen the training of faculty members so they can use more innovative teaching methods and software in distance teaching to motivate students to learn better at home.
Prof Hui says, ‘as the Chinese saying goes, it takes a decade to grow a tree, but a century to cultivate people. The latter is indeed the purpose of universities.’
Prof Michael Hui
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Prof Hui received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from CUHK in 1980. He obtained an advanced business administration certificate from the University of Aix-Marseille in France in 1983 and a doctoral degree from London Business School in 1988. He has served at many universities in the United Kingdom and Canada. In 1996, he began teaching in the Department of Marketing at CUHK. His teaching and research cover the fields of service industry marketing, cross-cultural consumer behaviour, and marketing in China.
Source: MyUM E-version
