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Liz Heron

A trio of Californian university graduates dominates the new, beefed-up senior management team that will lead Polytechnic University through the transition to four-year degrees. 
An eight-strong team including the new posts of provost and executive vice-president was unveiled yesterday at the Hung Hom campus, after it won unanimous backing from the university's ruling council. 
The team, which will replace seven senior academics who are stepping down over the coming year, completes the new administration of president Professor Timothy Tong Wai-cheung,  who himself was a postgraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. 
The key post of provost goes to Professor Philip Chan Ching-ho,  formerly dean of engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, who  took his first degree at the University of California, Davis. 
The provost will plan and oversee academic development.
Professor Nicholas Yang,  currently chief executive of the Cyberport management company, will be the new executive vice-president, responsible for planning all non-academic activities. Yang graduated from Caltech and took his masters degree at Stanford. 
Other key appointments include Professor Judy Tsui, vice-president of marketing, internationalisation and advanced executive development; Professor Angelina Yuen,  vice-president of institutional advancement and partnership; and Professor Walter Yuen,  vice-president of academic development. 
Tong, who took the helm at PolyU in February, said: 'I would like to think of us taking the best of both worlds. The provost position is rather common in US universities. It is a central post that oversees all academic matters within a university. 
'At PolyU, the tradition actually started 10 to 15 years ago to have a high-level vice-president to oversee the administrative functions of the university.'
The executive vice-president position was a development of this role, in which PolyU was something of a pioneer. 
'We want to improve the quality of the university - we want to deliver the best education possible to our students - and we want to support our faculty to do research that impacts society,' Tong said.
If as a result PolyU, which this year made it into the top 200 of the THE-QS World University table for the first time, moved further up the rankings, university leaders would celebrate it as 'the icing on the cake', he said.



Californian graduates to spearhead PolyU's switch to 4-year degrees