Vice-Chancellor's Report 1978-82

vigour, there would have to be research institutes in the major areas of scholarly concern, and there would also have to be a thrust towards international cooperation and for international recognition. Today, looking back from the vantage point of 1982 ， one might have thought that all this was but natural, and was nothing extraordinary in the context of a modem university wi th a strong Chinese background. As a matter of fact, most i f not all of these tenets surely have already been at one time or another enunciated by the founders of the three Colleges, since they represented but the common hope and goal of a whole generation of modern Chinese scholars. Nevertheless, it was surely due to the determination and foresight of my predecessor that we began to realize fully the possibility and even the necessity for a truly modern Chinese university to be established in those particular terms, at that point of time here in Hong Kong. He had a vision, and that vision had changed our perception and also the academic landscape of Hong Kong since. To be realized, a vision has to be translated into concrete programmes. The University spent the next four years, that is, 1970 to 1974 ， in trying to do this, in physical, institutional as well as academic terms. It was during this period that the main buildings of the University were completed on their present sites and the whole University was physically brought together for the first time. It was also during this period that the f u ll implication of the rather complicated institutional framework of the University was gradually being discerned. It became increasingly clear that there were inherent difficulties in trying to develop strong academic programmes on limited resources wi t h in such a framework. In certain fields, especially those in the natural sciences, which became all housed in a central Science Centre, the benefit of having relatively large academic departments with pooled resources to offer a wide range of programmes and forge ahead in research work also became clear. By the end of this period, it was quite apparent that an integral institutional framework was needed to match the already integrated physical framework of the University i f it was to develop properly into a truly modern institution capable of discharging the wide-ranging academic functions expected of it. The stage was now set for the far-reaching reorganization that was soon to take place. Thus the University began the search for a new constitution during the next three years, that is, 1975 to 1978. A working party 2