Poon Wai-yin
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education)
Professor, Department of Statistics
35-year award
Professor Poon Wai-yin has served CUHK for 35 years, but even that doesn’t fully reflect how long she’s been involved with the University. The mathematics and statistics professor remembers it clearly: she enrolled in Department of Mathematics in 1979 and continued her studies at graduate school in 1983, eventually becoming a lecturer in statistics in 1987. In all that time, she has been away from campus for just two years and four months, when she pursued her doctoral studies in Los Angeles. Her two brothers are also mathematics graduates of the University.
“CUHK is a vibrant place. Never has the thought of leaving once crossed my mind since I joined the University. I believe many colleagues, in particular our long-serving staff members, feel the same: tempting as it may be to explore the other side of the world, we’re attached to this place and would like to stay here and serve, giving back to our alma mater,” says Professor Poon.
The evolving roles assumed by the University’s senior education administrator over the past few decades—from an undergraduate, research student and teacher to middle and senior management—have given her a variety of vantage points from which to appreciate the University’s myriad facets. Her quiet modesty and self-deprecation remain, despite her senior position. She attributes her teaching and administration career to the many magnanimous souls she’s met along the way. Her inspirations have included seniors at school who possessed an altruistic spirit and exemplary academic and co-curricular track records, co-workers and seniors in the Faculty of Science who selflessly serve students and others, as well as members of the University management whom she has got to know up close and work together in later days. They have made her realise, she says, that service is the noblest.
“Their vision, magnanimity, way of conducting things and self-sacrifice give me a glimpse of why CUHK has enjoyed a meteoric rise within decades.”
In her undergraduate days, Professor Poon was a sports enthusiast. In the minority in the mathematics department as a woman, she was also chair of the student maths society. The experience of working as a team to overcome challenges big and small has fuelled her passion for pushing through key initiatives till today. The uphill battles Professor Poon and her team have fought include designing a four-year science curriculum and adopting broad-based admissions policy for it; implementing online teaching during the pandemic; launching the Co-Operative Education Programme that lets students gain paid, full-time work experience while earning credits; introducing the national security education; and initiating the double-major programmes which the University co-offers with its Shenzhen campus. Most of them were completed in staggeringly short periods of time, ranging from weeks to a few months. But the shortage of time, manpower and resources hasn’t prevented her and the team delivering results that surpass everyone’s expectations.
Taking stock of the past and looking into the future, she expresses gratitude: “I would like to give thanks to my teachers, seniors, colleagues and students who throughout the years have led me, mentored me, trusted me, supported me, helped me, accompanied and counselled me. These days, we may have been frustrated by the turbulent times the society and the university have been through. But as long as we keep to our station, we shall overcome all the hardships and difficulties. And we can expect our next 60 years to be even more fruitful than the ones behind us.”
By Amy Li
Photo by Keith Hiro
