About the University of Macau

The University of Macau (UM) was founded in 1981 as a private institution by the name of University of East Asia. Through three decades' development, it has become a leading university in Macao. UM offers approximately 100 bachelor's, master's and PhD programmes—with English as the main medium of instruction—through various academic units, including Faculty of Business Administration, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Science and Technology, Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, and Honours College. UM currently has more than 7,000 students and 400 teaching staff members. UM is committed to producing outstanding graduates for society, becoming a world-class university, providing elite undergraduate education, developing a high-calibre faculty team, enhancing the development of unique academic programmes, and building an efficient and environmentally friendly campus.

UM adopts international governance and management systems and recruits outstanding teaching staff from around the world in order to create a multilingual learning environment for students. To develop a strong faculty team and enhance the quality of teaching and research, UM adopts an international review system to evaluate the teaching staff's abilities and reward outstanding staff. UM is committed to building an efficient and eco-friendly campus through tapping its full potential, innovating, and implementing numerous environmental management plans.

In recent years UM has attained numerous impressive results in scientific research. For instance, a research project in microelectronics was granted Macao's first US patent in the field; a research achievement in Chinese medicine was granted an invention patent by the State Intellectual Property Office; with the support of the Macao SAR government and the Science and Technology Development Fund of Macao SAR, UM gained in November 2010 approval from the Ministry of Science and Technology for establishing the first two state key laboratories in Chinese medicine and microelectronics; a cutting-edge research project on the Internet of Things (IOT) which was headed by UM's rector Wei Zhao and numerous other UM professors was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology for funding under the national "973 Programme", signaling a crucial step in UM's development in IOT; a paper on chip design set a new record and received the "Silk-Road Award" at the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) which is known as the "Chip Olympics", making UM the world's No. 15 in the field.

UM has also realized numerous achievements on the academic front. For instance, the future direction of development for various faculties has been re-identified, with the aim of developing a number of high-quality academic programmes with unique characteristics; relevant plans have been formulated in an attempt to develop Macaology as an important branch of humanities and make it into an academic business card of UM; UM's vice rector (research) Prof. Rui Martins who is an expert on microelectronics was elected corresponding member of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences; Prof. U Seng Pan of the Faculty of Science and Technology received the Prize for Scientific and Technological Innovation 2010 from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation; dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology Prof. Philip Chen who is an expert on computational intelligent systems became the first incumbent scholar from the Greater China region to be elected president of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Prof. Iu Vai Pan of the Department of Civil Engineering became the first scholar from Macao to be elected fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. UM has the fine tradition of conferring honorary professorships and doctorates upon distinguished personages, including the former president of the United States Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush, in an attempt to strengthen the university's ties with the local and international communities and enhance its international reputation.

2009 marked an important milestone in UM's history, because it was in this year that the central government decided to reserve a piece of land on Hengqin Island covering approximately one square kilometer for Macao for the construction of a new UM campus. The construction kick-off ceremony for the main buildings of the new campus took place in November 2010, signaling that the new campus project entered a new stage. The new campus will offer UM larger space to pursue its education ideals. The number of faculties on the new campus will increase to approximately eight, and the residential college system will be fully implemented. There will be three open scientific research bases to promote exchange and cooperation between UM and other universities in Macao, Guangdong and China, in the development of new technologies, thereby advancing the development of the innovative technologies industry of Macao and China as a whole. The new campus will become not only a new landmark for Macao, but also a new cradle for students' growth and scientific development.

To provide software support, UM has in recent years implemented various strategies for enhancing education. These strategies include (1) establishing the Honours College; (2) introducing the residential college system; (3) setting up Further Studies and Placement Centre to help students make sufficient career planning; (4) launching the undergraduate research programme to nurture more research personnel, and (5) adopting a new education model that consists of four components, namely discipline-specific education, general education, research and internship education, and community and peer education, with the aim of realizing whole-person education. In the 2010/2011 academic year UM launched the residential college system and some general education courses on the current campus on a trial basis. In the 2011/2012 academic year UM will fully launch the new general education courses, in order to produce erudite and well-rounded graduates who can integrate knowledge in different realms into an interconnected whole.

There is no end to tapping UM's potential and fulfilling its mission. UM will seize the historic opportunity and strive to produce outstanding graduates with professional skills, extensive knowledge and high integrity through high-quality whole-person undergraduate education. UM aims to become a world-class university with excellence in teaching and research and bring Macao's higher education to new heights.