Bulletin No. 2, 2015

respective specialisms and commit themselves to cross-disciplinary reading. They had to open their ears to new ideas, and to put what they developed into practice. We made several overseas trips to learn from others’ experiences and examples. From 2009 to 2011, we offered pilot courses to collect student feedback for f u r ther enhancement. The GEF we have today is the result of continuous fine-tuning. Of course we did learn a lot from exemplary models worldwide, but I can say with pride that the unique GEF programme we have here is something only CUHK can offer.’ The GEF programme adopts a cross-disciplinary approach and comprises two compulsor y courses, namely ‘In Dialogue with Humanity’ and ‘In Dialogue with Nature’. Its content, firmly rooted in classics of different cultures and periods, encompasses both the sciences and the humanities, connects the present with the past, and brings together the East and the West. GEF is reading- and writing-intensive and taught in a seminar style, supplemented by mass lectures and online learning. Students are required to take an active role in pre-class reading, in-class discussion and after-class assignment writing. By engaging themselves in interactive dialogues with peers and teachers and critical analyses, students come to understand what wisdom the classics can reveal to the modern age. General education at CUHK is composed of Universit y General Education (UGE) Programme and College General Education Programme, and has played an important role in the undergraduate curriculum since the University’s founding. Before 2012, the UGE programme was supported by more than 200 courses offered by some 40 academic departments. Students were required to choose courses from each of the four areas—‘Chinese Cult ural Heritage’, ‘Nat ure, Science and Technology’, ‘Society and Culture’, and ‘Self and Humanity’. Seeing that the reversion to the four-year undergraduate curriculum in 2012 would allow more time for in-depth studies, CUHK grasped the opportunity to enhance the continuity of the UGE programme and the common learning experience of its students by raising the credit requirement from 15 to 21 points, and by introducing a six-credit General Education Foundation Programme (GEF). The GEF, unique among local institutions, is a common core programme that was added to the existing design of the UGE and College General Education. The GEF teaching team was responsible for developing the content, teaching materials and even writing textbooks for the programme. Dr. Lily Chiu said, ‘The GEF was first conceived of in 2006, and formally launched in 2012. At the beginning, teachers had to leave their comfor t zones, divert energy from their Evolution of CUHK’s Unique GE Foundation Course 24 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2015