Faculty members and students from UM and Tsinghua University, as well as Macao residents studying in Macao, attend the ceremony
The University of Macau (UM) today (31 March) held a ceremony in Beijing to confer an honorary doctorate upon Prof Chen Ning Yang, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics. Prof Yang said in his acceptance speech that he felt greatly honoured to receive the highest honour from UM, especially when this honour was received at Tsinghua University where he has spent more than 70 years. Guests at the ceremony included Xu Ting, director of the Department of Culture and Education of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Macao SAR; Zhao Lingshan, deputy director of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs Office of the Ministry of Education; Hong Wai, director of the Office of the Macao Special Administrative Region in Beijing; Qiu Yong, president of Tsinghua University, Beijing; Lam Kam Seng, chair of UM’s University Council; Wei Zhao, rector of UM; Lionel M Ni, vice rector (academic affairs) of UM; Philip Chen, dean of UM’s Faculty of Science and Technology; and Liu Chuan Sheng, master of UM’s Chao Kuang Piu College. Lam Kam Seng presented the honorary degree to Prof Yang in the company of Rector Wei Zhao. Faculty members and students from UM and Tsinghua University, as well as Macao residents studying in Beijing, also attended the ceremony. ‘I visited UM last spring, and the new campus left a deep impression on me,’ said Prof Yang at the ceremony. ‘At that time, all the buildings on the new campus had been completed, and they looked beautiful. Now UM has moved to the new campus, which I believe will have an enormous impact on the university’s development over decades to come.’ UM Rector Wei Zhao thanked Tsinghua University for its assistance in organising the ceremony, which allowed UM to present the highest honour to Prof Yang at his alma mater. Rector Zhao noted that Tsinghua University was the most important member of the National Southwest Associated University (NSAU) during Chinese people’s resistance against Japanese invasion. Wei Zhao said that NSAU was among the first universities in Asia to successfully combine liberal arts education with research, two important tasks of higher education, and UM’s ‘4-in-1’ model of education, which consists of education inside the classroom and education outside the classroom, is designed for the same purpose. And Prof Yang, who has received education at the NSAU, and who has now become a member of UM, is the epitome of UM’s ‘4-in-1’ model of education. Tsinghua University President Qiu Yong said in his speech that over the past three decades, UM has grown to be the best university in Macao in a number of areas, such as microelectronics. UM and Tsinghua University signed collaboration agreements in 2000, and Qiu Yong hopes that faculty and students from the two universities will have more opportunities for exchange and collaboration in the future. Philip Chen, dean of UM’s Faculty of Science and Technology, praised Prof Yang as a world-renowned physicist, saying that one of Yang’s most important contributions is that he has changed Chinese people’s self-imposed feeling of inferiority.
