Council News - January meeting
Vice President Nomination
In preparation for the election of the Vice President for Session 2018/2019, the Council reviewed and adopted the "Procedures and Schedule for Vice President Nomination". The nomination period will be from 1 February to 9 March 2018. A Council meeting (Special) will be held on 19 April 2018 for the candidate(s) to make a presentation to Council Members before the Council finalises its nomination(s) for the post of Vice President for election by Corporate Members on the day of the Annual General Meeting (AGM). The notification of the election of Vice President is printed on page 45 of this issue and details and the nomination form are available on the Institution's website at http://www.hkie.org.hk during the nomination period.
Proposed implementation timeline and communications plan for competence-based Professional Assessment and Scheme "A" Training in competence-based format
On the recommendation of the Q & M Board, the Council approved the proposed implementation timeline and communications plan for competence-based Professional Assessment and Scheme "A" Training in competence-based format.
According to the plan, competence-based Professional Assessment will be applicable to membership applications submitted on or after 1 April 2019 and candidates who submit the applications from 1 April 2019 to 31 December 2020 for resit of Professional Assessment can choose between the current system and the competence-based approach. Once the candidate has chosen the competence-based approach for Professional Assessment, the candidate is not allowed to revert back to the current system. On the other hand, Scheme "A" Training in competence-based format will be applicable to all trainees with the training start date on or after 1 April 2019 and the training documentation in competence-based format is targeted for release in October 2018.
More information will be available on the HKIE website in the second quarter of 2018. Please stay tuned for details.
Review of the HKIE Student Award Programmes
The Task Force on the Review of the HKIE Student Award Programmes was established under the Learned Society Board (LSB) during the Session to carry out a comprehensive review of the current HKIE student award programmes. With a view to increasing the impact of the HKIE student award programmes, the Task Force made a number of recommendations, including increasing the prize value of both the HKIE Scholarship and the HKIE Prize for Outstanding Engineering Students and introducing additional conditions for awardees of the HKIE Scholarship to qualify for subsequent scholarship installments. All the recommendations were adopted by the related Boards and will become effective from Session 2018/2019 onwards. The prize for the HKIE Scholarship will increase to HK$80,000 from HK$60,000 for each awardee and the amount for the HKIE Prize for Outstanding Engineering Students will increase to HK$5,000 from HK$3,000 for each awardee. The number of awardees will remain unchanged at three and ten respectively for each Session.
New Members' Reception cum Prize Presentation Ceremony
To warmly welcome our newly admitted members, a New Members' Reception was held on 26 January 2018 at the Hong Kong Club. Some 240 newly-admitted members and guests joined us at the Reception. The Trainee of the Year Award, the HKIE Scholarship and the HKIE Prize for Outstanding Engineering Students were also presented on the occasion. Highlights of the event will be reported in the next issue of the Journal.
The HKIE Strategy and Development Day
The HKIE Strategy and Development Day was held on 27 January 2018. A series of discussions were conducted on the day with both young and experienced members coming together to share their views on defining the new horizon for the profession and the Institution as well as on identifying means to strengthen the Institution's external connections. The views gathered and ideas generated during the discussions would be valuable in developing the Institution's strategy in the future. The next issue of the Journal will have more details of this event.
The HKIE 43rd Annual Dinner
The 43rd Annual Dinner will be held on 16 March 2018 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. We are honoured to have the Chief Executive of the HKSAR, The Honourable Mrs Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, GBM, GBS, as the Principal Guest of the event. Members are encouraged to join us on this important occasion. For booking details, please refer to page 50 of the Journal.
Outcomes-based Accreditation
The first round of full accreditation for engineering and computer science degree programmes using outcomes-based criteria will continue in 2018. It is expected that, for engineering degree programmes, full accreditation will be completed by the end of the 2018/19 academic year. Accordingly, 34 engineering degree programmes plus two computer science degree programmes and five higher diploma programmes will be assessed this year.
Online Member Profile Update Service
Members are encouraged to update their correspondence information and change of membership status via the Member Login area of the HKIE website at http://www.hkie.org.hk using the online member profile update service.
Farewell
We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Ms Angela Tam, Editor of the Journal, who will be leaving us in February 2018 after serving as the Editor of the Journal for over 20 years. We thank her for all her support and contributions, not only to the Journal but also to other activities of the Institution, and wish her all the best.