New Academic Year

Thus has started my 33rd year at PolyU.  Students have returned to campus. Classes have started.  Our office (Service-Learning) has just moved to another building on campus.  I am still settling into my own new office.  A lot of things have yet to be taken out of their boxes.  Much remain the same.  Yet there is also a lot that feels new. 

My role has certainly changed a lot.  For many years I mainly taught and conducted research in computer science.  Gradually I started doing more and more service-learning.  Initially, I worked mainly on the front line - teaching students, doing the research myself, designing projects, applying for funding.  I did not have very high respect for “administration”  or “management”.

Gradually, I had to take up program management, and assist the head of department to managing the subject and programs that we offer, and the other colleagues in the department.  The same happen in service-learning too, subsequently.  Initially, I was supervising and teaching students - on the front line.  More and more, I have to design subjects and projects, find the funding, plan the implementation, liaise with partners, train the teachers, guide the researchers, create new programs, imagine the future, venture into the unknown, talk, …  In many ways, doing many of the things that I disdained before. 

I have also come to appreciate something - creating and “managing” the environment for the font-line doers to do the work is no less important than doing the work itself.  At the same time, it is important to stay on the frontline at least part of the time, to remain connected with the reality.  It is the 33rd year, and still exciting.