01 Mar, 2023
The Annual School Awards of the HKBU School of Business recognise colleagues for their outstanding teaching, research and service. Five faculty members were honoured in the Awards for 2022-23.
Individual Teaching Award
Ms. Janet KWAN, Senior Lecturer, Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance
The teaching approaches Ms. Kwan has adopted over the years have been versatile and learner-centred. As an expert in teaching taxation courses and a General Education course instructor, Ms. Kwan has been incorporating various experiential learning components in the course design and inspiring students with real-world issues accompanied by detailed lecture notes she carefully prepares and updates constantly, for deepening and developing students’ understanding on the current issues manifested in Hong Kong. Ms. Kwan genuinely cares and is concerned for students performance and developments, where she has been adopting technology to make the communications easier with students, and to understand the difficulties they face, so as to be able to provide further guidance and assistance for the groups in need after the class time.
Team Teaching Award
Dr. Connie LI, Senior Lecturer, and Dr. Yan KWAN, Lecturer I, Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems (Dr. Li & Dr. Kwan are also the recipients of President's Award for Outstanding Performance in Team Teaching 2023)
Formed in 2016, the Social Entrepreneurship team, consisting of Dr. Connie Li and Dr. Yan Kwan, has developed and magnified the social entrepreneurship education with experiential learning and service-learning elements at HKBU during the past six years. They developed a three-staged student engagement approach for fostering social entrepreneurship education, which allows HKBU students to gain practical work experience, learn from social entrepreneurs via global field trips, and transfer key concepts of social entrepreneurship to secondary school students and assist them in developing viable social venture plans. This programme has impacted 400+ HKBU and secondary school students, 30+ local and overseas social enterprises, contributing 13,000+ service hours from HKBU students to social ventures in Hong Kong. Moreover, Dr. Li and Dr. Kwan have received two external teaching grants related to social entrepreneurship from the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia in 2019 and the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund (SIE Fund) in 2021, respectively. The latter has allowed the team to launch the project, “Nurturing Global-Minded Changemakers”, running from January 2021 to July 2024, integrating both teaching and case research components. Despite the challenges brought by the pandemic, the two committed educators have been implementing a student engagement pedagogy that cultivates a caring, engaging, and knowledgeable learning environment.
Early Career Researcher Award
Dr. Jongsoo KIM, Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems
Dr. Jongsoo “Jays” Kim is a creative researcher as demonstrated in his research questions and empirical strategies. Since joining the HKBU School of Business in 2018, his research in the domain of strategic management has been particularly compelling not only to the top-tier journals such as Strategic Management Journal and Research Policy, but also to major media outlets including Wall Street Journal and Business Times. In 2021, Dr. Kim was selected in Early Career Scheme (ECS) by the University Grants Committee (UGC) with a grant of HK$469,000. In addition to this, his research has been awarded from several major conferences in his field, including Academy of Management Distinguished Student Paper Winner, Strategic Management Society Best PhD Paper Finalist and Association Korean Management Scholar Best Paper Winner with Samsung Scholarship. He is currently working on several interesting projects such as 1) the impact of being acquired on new product quality failure, 2) evaluation bias contingency driven by prior performance and 3) the impact of former-entrepreneur-outside director in the corporate boardroom.
Service Award
Prof. Yuk Shing CHENG, Professor, Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance (Prof. Cheng is also the recipient of President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Service 2023)
A well-respected economics scholar in Hong Kong and beyond, Prof. Yuk Shing Cheng has made substantial contributions not only to the academia but also to the wider communities. Under his headship of the Department of Economics from 2014 to 2021, the research performance of the Department improved significantly. The Department’s profile of the teaching programmes also enriched substantially, with many new elements in data analytics and the digital economy. With strong research track-record, Prof. Cheng was awarded over USD500,000 for projects from the Ford Foundation (Beijing Office) to study China’s economic system and international development finance. He has set up the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies to facilitate research, teaching and learning, and knowledge transfer activities related to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Prof. Cheng has enthusiastically participated in the development of GE courses and is now serving as the Chairman of the GE Committee. Utilising his economics knowledge, Prof. Cheng has been actively providing public services through participation in various advisory committees and activities, including the appointment by the Financial Secretary to be a member of the Business Facilitation Advisory Committee since 2020 and serving as a member of the Investor and Financial Education Council. Prof. Cheng has also assisted the growth of tertiary education sector by serving as an external advisor/examiner/reviewer for many local and overseas universities. He has also made immense contributions to the non-government community, such as helping professional music players to corporatise their organisation and service as an expert adviser for Hong Kong Chronicles.
Service Award
Dr. Clara KAN, Senior Lecturer, Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems
Dr. Clara Kan is an accomplished marketing professional before her teaching career. The footprint of her career covered telecommunications, retail, financial services and FMCG advertising at various senior positions. She has served as the Associate and then Programme Director of the MSc in Entrepreneurship and Global Marketing (MScEGM) programme, and the BBA Marketing concentration coordinator, since 2018 and 2019, respectively. On top of the usual work as a concentration coordinator, Dr. Kan has walked extra miles to connect with prospective Senior Year candidates in 2020 and 2021 and thus brought a surge in senior year applications. Dr. Kan has worked relentlessly on the smooth conversion of the MScEGM from a joint degree to a double degree programme with Grenoble Ecole de Management. Such transformation has brought a 300%+ increase of student applications, a streamlined programme administration and a higher flexibility for incoming students. With her expertise in social innovation and entrepreneurship, Dr. Kan has contributed to relevant GE courses by providing advice on the course development. In addition to programme and department levels, Dr. Kan has been actively involved in School committees as a member of the School’s Internationalization Advisory Group from 2018 to 2021 and of the Task Force on the Assessment and Enhancement of Graduate Employability. Beyond HKBU, Dr. Kan has been an appointed advisory committee member of the Enhancing Self-Reliance Through District Partnership Programme of Home Affairs Bureau since 2018. She has also been on the board of Fullness Social Enterprises Society Limited since its inception in 2012. Through the years, Dr. Kan has been a trainer for capacity building of numerous social enterprises and NGOs. She sits on the governance committee of multi-million projects funded by SIE Fund, and has co-authored three booklets related to social enterprises practice in Hong Kong.