RS Inauguration Ceremony 2020/21

The Inauguration Ceremony 2020-21 of Department of Rehabilitation Sciences (RS) was held on 2nd September 2020, marking the beginning of a new academic life for a new cohort of students. Due to the current COVID-19 epidemic, this is the first time for the Inauguration Ceremony to be held online instead of face-to-face. Despite of this difficult condition, we still have over 300pax guests and students joining our Ceremony online.

During the Opening Address, Prof. Hector Tsang (Cally Kwong Mei Wan Professor in Psychosocial Health, Chair Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences and Head of RS) said that he was honoured to deliver the 1st speech in his second term in RS for the Inauguration Ceremony, which is also his 4th speech for the same event since he assumed his position as Head in 2017. He mentioned that RS has made great achievements in the areas of education, research and knowledge transfer over the past three years. He especially mentioned the establishment of the Tam Wing Fan Rehabilitation Services Centre in Occupational Threapy in room W210/211 with the generous donations from Mr and Mrs Tam. With the opening of this centre, RS can provide more high-quality OT services with the use of world-class rehabilitation equipment. He concluded that although most of this last academic year did not make us to enjoy a normal and face-to-face university life due to the social movements and the Covid-19 outbreak, surprisingly most of the students had a good overall impression of their online learning experiences.

For the JUPAS admission figures of this year, Prof. Tsang mentioned that our subjects remain outstanding as ever, with the average scores of our PT and OT freshmen in their best SIX DSE subjects standing at 39.6 and 37.8 points respectively (or 34.4 and 33.2 points, if we use the old conversion method). The figures this year continue to rank 1st and 2nd places among ALL first-year, first-degree programmes in PolyU. It is so encouraging that Communications and Public Affairs Office of PolyU, for the first time, arranged a press conference to announce our great achievements in admission this year.

Looking forward to the next 3 years, with the extension of MOT (Master in Occupational Therapy) and MPT (Master in Physiotherapy) programme, and also the developing of the new PolyU campus in Homantin, which can strongly admit over 500 students each year, it is no doubt that PolyU RS will maintain our leading position in the provision of professional education for qualified physiotherapists and occupational therapists in Hong Kong to meet the societal needs.

Lastly, Prof. Tsang hopes that all of the freshmen will take them as role models, and set ambitious goals for themselves. In addition to working as a clinical therapist, excel themselves in health care management and become leaders in the health sector.
We were honoured to have the presence of Prof. Herman Lau (Director of Allied Health CUHK Medical Centre) as our officiating guest and to give us a speech. As our outstanding alumni, he hopes that all of the freshmen will take their professors as exemplars and become educators and researchers in the next generation. In this role, all of them will like them nurture future talents, or to become top scientists in the two professional disciplines.

We were also pleased to have the pre-recorded video form Mr Daniel Lo Chief Manager - Allied Health, Hospital Authority, who is also a former physiotherapy student of PolyU PT. He told the freshman to have passionate about study and work, so as to prepare themselves to be health professional upon graduation from the program.

Followed by a series of prize presentations to both the awarded top students, Prof. Hector Tsang made a closing remark with warm congratulations to the recently promoted staff members and a vote of thanks to all the guests who attended the Ceremony.