CW Chu College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

To introduce students to the concept of creativity and the details of The Professor Julie Hung Hsua Yu Scholarship for Intellectual Excel-leration ('Julie Yu Scholarship' for short), the Workshop on Creativity was held on 22 January 2019. Year 3 students who have to finish their Final Year Projects for the College General Education course 'Senior Seminar' next academic year were especially encouraged to attend the workshop to gain inspiration for their group projects.

The workshop started with the course coordinator of 'Senior Seminar', Prof Kenneth YOUNG, giving a warm welcome and a brief introduction on the background of and application details for the Julie Yu Scholarship, which is funded by a generous donation from Prof Julie Yu's former students to celebrate and promote the spirit of excellence, generosity and creativity shared by Dr CW CHU, the Chu Scholars, Prof YU and the donors, and also captured in the College Motto, Cultus et Beneficentia.

The recipient of the Julie Yu Scholarship 2016–17, Mr CHEN Zhihong, and one of the recipients of the Certificate of Merit in 2017–18, Mr HAN Liming, then shared on their creative endeavours.

Zhihong's winning project was named 'COLOVE—Sensing the Colour of the World through Touching'. As a student majoring in Mechanical and Automation Engineering, he has applied his knowledge from his major studies to his design of a pair of sensor gloves with which the visually-impaired are able to tell the colours of the objects they touch. He said that his inspiration for the design came from the Ironman, self-stabilising eating utensils, the annual robot competition Robocon, and a chat with a visually-impaired friend. To turn creativity into success, Zhihong thought that the participants should be confident of their ideas and ready to devote time and effort to it.

Liming and another Year 3 student, Mr ZHENG Sike, won the Certificate of Merit for their life-simulation board game named 'CHOICE: The Fantastic Fantasy'. In the game setting, an imaginary world, players have to make choices and decisions that are similar to those in our daily life. Through the game, players are encouraged to maximise the rationality of real life events. In Liming's eyes, a creative endeavour is a combination of curiosity, discovery of what is neglected in life, understanding of the subject matter, rigorous attitude and time devoted to the subject.

The workshop was further enriched by the sharing of Prof Bernard SUEN, Project Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship of CUHK, on 'Design and Data, Story and System: Computational Design Thinking as the Basis of Digital and Media Literacy for 21st Century Talents'.

Prof SUEN pointed out that the 21st century is the era for the rise of the mobile internet, global startup workforce and Big Data. These global trends have led to transformations in the corporate workplace. For example, offices are redesigned into co-working spaces by large corporations. With the emergence of different social media and online platforms, such as mobile applications, large companies benefit from the API economy, deriving income via new technologies and platforms and the data obtained.

To equip our future leaders for coping with the changes and surviving future challenges, STEM education has been promoted in many communities in recent years, and the Hong Kong government has also launched major initiatives. Students are encouraged to join STEM programmes at an early age. The key component of both STEM and the subsequent STEAM education is integration, with a focus on interdisciplinary learning.

According to Prof SUEN, it is essential for our students to receive multidisciplinary training and possess 'T-shaped' knowledge with breath anchored on depth in this Network Age, where labour-intensive jobs are being replaced by AI or robots. Our students should pursue life-long learning to acquire knowledge from different domains, so as to stay competitive in this fast-changing world.