By tradition, June is the month when HKUST inducts honorary fellows into our big family. For this honor, the selection criteria boil down to just two considerations:  the honoree’s outstanding contributions to the community at large, or to HKUST. This year’s recipients are outstanding and honor-worthy on both counts.

This year, only three people received this high honor. Dr Andrew Chan, Deputy Chairman of the Arup Group Ltd, a famed geotechnical engineer who helped build the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Zuhai Superhighway, the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube on the Mainland. This side of the border, his building credits the Stonecutter’s Bridge, IFC, ICC, the HSBC building. He is now busy building the mammoth Hong Kong-Zuhai-Macau Bridge. He is part of HKUST’s history for giving us the site formation and structural foundations. Otherwise there wouldn’t be the HKUST as we know it today. What’s more, he has been teaching our students as an adjunct professor, and giving them jobs and scholarships. 

For years, Mr Herbert Cheng, Jr, Chief Executive Officer of Chiaphua Industries Ltd, has served HKUST quietly and faithfully as our Council Member and Vice Chair of its Human Resources Committee. His family foundation has provided scholarships for needy and worthy students in this university and across the wider community. He is an ethical employer who financially supports the education of his Hong Kong employees unconditionally, while organizing them to volunteer their services to the handicapped and the elderly. His good deeds have been performed characteristically without fanfare and under the radar.

This year, we also honor an outstanding teacher, Prof Laurence Franklin, who has taught the most courses and has been rated the best teacher by his students in the Business School. The courses he delivers are thoughtfully and thoroughly researched and designed, and come with a healthy and heavy dose of market reality. He has donated $5 million out of his own pocket for student scholarships and for enabling students from Non-Profit Organizations to attend our business programs. He is a teacher of the highest order, both in quality and quantity.