Secretary, Provost, Registrar, fellow former deans, chief executives of our teaching hospital partners, president of our medical alumni association, graduands, parents, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, 「一年之計，莫如樹穀；十年之計，莫如樹木； 終身之計，莫如樹人。一樹一穫者，穀也； 一樹十穫者，木也；一樹百穫者，人也。 我苟種之，如神用之，舉事如神，唯王之門。」 《管子•權修第三》 The provenance of this quote must be familiar to all. Dating from the SpringAutumn Period almost 2,700 years ago, it epitomises the philosophy on what we would now call human capital development by Guan Zhong (管仲), prime minister of the State of Qi (齊). The true essence of any university is its people – students, faculty and staff. HKUMed was the first faculty to have established a deanery portfolio in human capital back in 2013, that has since been elevated in stature to come directly under the Executive Associate Dean’s purview. Since the Vice Chancellor’s arrival in 2018, he has emphatically and persistently reminded us of the importance of recruiting the best talent and nurturing them in a supportive environment. Therefore, we have designated human capital development as our headline priority for this academic year. Let me explain further in HKUMed’s 「一年之計」, otherwise known as the annual State of the Faculty Address. When I took over the deanship almost a decade back, the top three most pressing needs were space, space and space. The last major campus extension was completed in 2002 when we moved into our main complex at 21 Sassoon Road. HKUMed also took up new space at 5 Sassoon Road in 2011 but is only one of State of the Faculty Address 2021 by Professor Gabriel M Leung several tenant faculties at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research. There has been no new space for us to grow since. Meanwhile, the size of the Faculty has grown by leaps and bounds. Looking at undergraduate student numbers alone, in 2002, we offered only four programmes, consisting of 303 first-year-first-degree places. For the 2022 intake, we will be admitting 295 MBBS, 210 BNurs, 35 BPharm, 20 BChinMed, 38 BBiomedSc, 20 BASc (Global Health and Development) and 15 BSc (Bioinformatics) first-year students. We have doubled both the number of programmes offered as well as our total undergraduate intake over the past 20 years, from 303 to 633 per year. During that time, with the increase in student places came 73% more faculty members, who in turn require laboratory space, and the recruitment of postdocs 4
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