The public University of Macau (UM) said yesterday that it will have a new teaching centre in rented premises on Zhuhai’s Hengqin island at the end of next month, with postgraduate programmes to be run there initially.
The new teaching centre will be located in an office building in Hengqin.
UM Faculty of Science and Technology Dean Xu Chengzhong made the remarks while speaking to reporters yesterday on the sidelines of an event on the campus.
The UM’s current campus is situated in an area of Zhuhai’s Hengqin island, which the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) is exercising jurisdiction over, that has been leased from Zhuhai.
The UM was relocated to its current one-square-kilometre Hengqin campus in 2014 from its former one, located on a hill of Taipa island.
UM Rector Song Yonghua told reporters in January this year that the university was planning to build a new campus in Hengqin. The university’s second campus will be half the size of the current one, Song said at that time.
Xu said yesterday that a new teaching centre in Hengqin will come into use at the end of next month. After it opens, Xu said, the teaching centre will be used for running postgraduate programmes first, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, fintech, and big data run by his faculty.
Xu noted that the current UM campus’ teaching space and facilities are now almost used to full capacity, adding that the new teaching centre in Hengqin will provide more areas for teaching and experiments.
In addition, Xu also revealed yesterday that the future UM campus in Hengqin is slated to be completed in 2028.
According to local media reports earlier this month, the UM’s new teaching centre will be located on several floors of an office building, near the Macau New Neighbourhood (MNN) residential estate, in Hengqin that the university has rented.
Xu said yesterday that the setting-up of the new teaching centre is an interim measure aiming to provide more teaching areas before the completion of the future UM campus on the island.
Xu said that the university currently has about 14,000 students, adding that after the new campus opens, the number of students is expected increase by between 6,000 and 8,000 from the current one.
University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Science and Technology Dean Xu Chengzhong talks to reporters on the university’s campus yesterday. – Photo courtesy of TDM
