A professor's job in teaching and research

To a 27 years old young man in the early 1970's, a tenure-track academic appointment in the University was an attractive start for a professional career and a guaranteed source of decent income to raise a family. After attending an interview smoothly at the Vice-Chancellor's office, I felt pretty confident in securing the job as I believed my services would be needed in the University's ongoing research projects in which I had been heavily involved.

"Teaching and research" were stipulated to be the main duties of my job, which I found easy and pleasurable. I was required to lecture for only 3 - 4 hours per week. The associated laboratory, design office and field work classes were well taken care of by teaching assistants and postgraduate students. Therefore most of my time were spent on research. Research funding was not abundant, but adequate. At 29 I was awarded an Association of Commonwealth Universities Fellowship to enable me to do one year full-time teaching and research at the University of Nottingham to experience the cultural difference between HK and UK students. Upon returning to Hong Kong I was given plenty of opportunities for professional training and development (thanks to my former PhD supervisor, mentor and boss) in parallel with my teaching and research. It enabled me to obtain the practical experience required to supplement my teaching and support my research, and to establish myself as a fully qualified professional engineer. The first of our three babies arrived and life was busy and happy. I could have no complaints other than having to go out and do my research work when there was a typhoon.

In the early years of my academic career I was hardly ten years older than my students. They needed little coaching because most of them entered university with 3 or 4 A's in their A-Level exams. At present many of them are holding senior positions either in the government or in the engineering profession. Recently when they celebrated the 25th or 30th anniversary of their graduation and honoured me as one of their old teachers, I could still recall their young faces in the old days but could not help wondering what contributions I had really made in the making of these high achievers.

The 1970's was an era of active university student movements in Hong Kong, in response to and in resonance with the human rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the West and the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. The "Democratic Walls" on campus were constantly covered with posters, slogans, and articles of heated debates on social, economic and political issues between Christians, atheists, Marxists..... Athough not all students participated in the social concern movements, social conscience could be sensed in the university campus.

What about the professors? Certainly some were as active as the students and even played mentoring roles. As for me, I belonged to the majority who were quite indifferent. I was more interested in diligently pursuing my own academic career in teaching and research. The senior academic colleagues had established examples for me. Just follow their paths and hope that one day my hard work would be rewarded with promotions and salary increments. Besides, I spent a lot of my time outside working in church, where politics and social concern issues were hardly mentioned from the pulpit