Joseph J.Y. Sung
Vice Chancellor and President
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Message from the Vice-Chancellor and President
I would like to congratulate the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages on its 10th anniversary. One of the youngest on our campus, the department exudes youthful energy and bright promise. Since its debut a decade ago, the department has nurtured a generation of students who have achieved bilingual competency and multicultural awareness, in alignment with CUHK’s vision and mission. I’d like to take the opportunity to reiterate that we are a bilingual university and it is our mission to combine tradition with modernity, and bring together China and the West. With diverse languages and cultures in Asia and Europe represented, the department plays an important role in achieving this mission as its programmes conspicuously set the nurturing of bilingual and multilingual competence and awareness as a top priority on their agenda. In ten years, the department has established its presence and reputation in the local and international community.
Among its many significant achievements, I applaud the department for its QS World Universities ranking by subject, which has been as high as no. 27 in linguistics (2011) and no.11 in Modern Languages (2014). Hailed as the discipline that is most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences, linguistics is a field with unique character in the Faculty of Arts, well-positioned as a bridge between humanities and sciences. In areas such as language development, language disorders, bilingualism, speech and hearing and sign language studies, linguistics not only lies at the centre but also has the potential to connect with the biomedical sciences, cognitive neuroscience, engineering, genetics, life science, medicine and psychology.
The department has been active in establishing links with institutions in the regional and international community. A recent example is the establishment of the CUHK-Utrecht University Joint Centre for Language, Mind and Brain which is the first research centre jointly established by a department in the Faculty of Arts with an international partner. A leading university in the Netherlands and Europe, Utrecht University is internationally renowned for its research in linguistics and neuroscience. I congratulate the department on this milestone achievement. CUHK is committed to internationalization and developing interdisciplinary research through building strong teams with our strategic partners. The department has also been instrumental in setting up the Joint Research Centre for Language and Human Complexity with partners at Peking University, and the University System of Taiwan. To enhance CUHK’s regional and global reputation, the University is supportive of the department’s efforts in building interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration and forging strategic partnerships involving academic areas with attained distinction and world-class impact with a track record of achievements in research and scholarship.
I wish the department a bright future and every success in scaling new heights.
Joseph J.Y. Sung
Vice Chancellor and President
Chinese University of Hong Kong