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EDUCATION
engineering subjects, Chinese language and medical sciences. Courses leading to a diploma in management studies and Chinese language also are offered.
A recent addition to the Faculty of Arts is the Department of Fine Arts which will offer undergraduate courses in both Chinese and Western art history and appreciation. The other departments in the faculty are Chinese Language and Literature, English Studies and Comparative Literature, History, Geography and Geology, and Philos- ophy.
The development of dental education in Hong Kong gained impetus during 1978. The Dean of Dental Studies and the Professor of Conservative Dentistry took up their posts in July and the Senior Dental Technologist began work in September. All assisted the Hong Kong Polytechnic to introduce its diploma course in dental tech- nology in October. Three more dental clinical professors were appointed on a pro- leptic basis and became actively involved in the design of the dental curriculum. The university's dental school will enrol its first students in 1980. The building programme associated with the dental project continued according to plan, with the commence- ment of construction work on the substructure of the dental hospital, in Hospital Road, Sai Ying Pun, and on the new animal house and amenities building in Sassoon Road, Pok Fu Lam.
In July, 1978, the Departments of Architecture and Law separated from their parent bodies to become the School of Architecture and the School of Law.
In 1977-8, the Department of Extra-Mural Studies provided more than 500 evening and day courses for more than 13,000 adult students. The year saw the opening of a new town centre in Central District with a classroom capacity for 600 students. Subjects offered by the department include art and design, business studies, economics, law, languages, oriental studies, a range of liberal arts courses, and a wide variety of vocational and professional courses. Most of these courses are conducted in English, but some are taught in Mandarin and a significant proportion are in Cantonese.
The general library contains almost 290,000 volumes, including the Robert Mor- rison Collection. The Hung On-to Memorial Library has a special collection of books on Hong Kong. The Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library, of more than 210,000 volumes, contains many rare items. In addition, there are two branch libraries the medical library with more than 45,000 volumes, including bound periodicals, and the law library, with about 16,000 volumes.
Research
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The Centre of Asian Studies continues to serve as a focal point for the academic community working on research projects on Asia and, in particular, China and Hong Kong. In 1978, the centre published a linguistic study of the style of Lu Hsun; a historical study of early Ch'ing Dynasty Chinese censers; an annotated catalogue in- cluding critical essays on wooden-fish books collected in the centre and the Fung Ping Shan Library; and a socio-legal study of the Hong Kong Labour Tribunal.
The centre also edited a Directory of Current Hong Kong Research on Asian Topics 1978, with an appendix on Macau and, in response to demand, produced a second impression with minor corrections of the Gang of Four: First Essays after the Fall. The proceedings of the fifth Leverhulme regional conference on 'China: Development and Challenge', in four volumes, was prepared for publication.