IFTM Life

Forward thinking

中文摘要 / Summary in Chinese

The new IFT Taipa campus is swinging fully into action from academic year 2016/17. The site begins receiving classes in August but renovation work will continue for some time, as the Institute further adapts and upgrades the facilities there.

The new site is located on the former campus of the University of Macau in Taipa. It makes use of several buildings granted to the Institute by the Macao SAR Government following the University’s move to Hengqin Island. Buildings granted to IFT comprise: the former University of Macau Library; the Staff Quarters building; 2 laboratories; and the East Asia Hall student dormitory.

“IFT had been waiting for a long time to expand physically,” says Institute President Dr. Fanny Vong. “We needed more space to offer better facilities to students and to lecturers.”

Dr. Vong adds: “The new campus will enable us to offer more programmes; we will be able to enrich and enhance our learning and teaching environments; and students will have a lot more training areas.”

The Institute plans to establish a second training hotel that would be located at the new Taipa campus, following on from the success of IFT’s Educational Hotel, Pousada de Mong-Há. The new training unit will be located at the former Staff Quarters building of the former University of Macau campus. Discussions are under way regarding what the new educational hotel will contain, and how it will operate.

Prior to the opening of the new Taipa campus, IFT vacated completely the facilities it leased for several years at the César Fortune Building, also in Taipa: they were closed at the end of June.

The new Taipa campus gives IFT the potential further to expand its efforts at internationalisation. The availability of extra student accommodation will allow the Institute to receive a greater number of international students, in particular on exchange programmes. IFT plans also to use the new facilities to strengthen its involvement in global academic research initiatives and as a regional hub for tourism education and training. Those steps follow a memorandum of understanding relating to those topics, signed last year between the Macao SAR Government and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

Other proposals include separating IFT’s 2 teaching units: the Tourism College – offering bachelor degree programmes – would have all its operations based in the new Taipa campus, while the Institute’s Tourism and Hotel School – responsible for the vocational and professional training programmes – would remain in the Mong-Há Hill facilities.

“The Mong-Há campus currently is very crowded because both the Tourism College and the Tourism and Hotel School have been sharing the site, and both have grown very rapidly over the past 10 years,” says Dr. Vong.

“With the new campus, we feel it is now time to move degree programmes all to the same site,” she adds. “That might happen already within 2 years. First, we still need to do some renovation work on the Taipa campus.”

Redevelopment in stages

The renovation work at the new Taipa campus has been at the top of the agenda for Mr. Wesly Lai. He is a veteran member of the IFT staff – having worked there since 1997 – and currently heads the information technology team. He leads the IFT internal group responsible for overseeing all relocation and redevelopment work relating to the new site.

“This project is a challenge,” says Mr. Lai. The entire redevelopment project for the new campus will take some years to be concluded.

“There is no final schedule to have everything ready,” Mr. Lai explains. “The work will be done in stages,” in order not to disturb classes and units already in operation on the new campus, he adds.

Planning is ongoing for part of the new facilities. The Institute wants to involve its various stakeholders in outlining the future of the Taipa campus.

The centrepiece of the new site is the former University of Macau Library building, which will host all IFT academic activities in Taipa. As part of the first phase, it features classrooms, offices for lecturers, a library and 2 auditoriums (one with 80 seats; the other with about 200 seats); all to be available at the start of academic year 2016/17.

The 5-floor building has been renamed by IFT: it is now called the ‘Forward Building’. When the initial letter of that facility’s name is combined with those of the Institute’s other 2 academic buildings located at the Mong-Há campus – namely the ‘I’ of the ‘Inspiration Building’ and the ‘T’ of the ‘Team Building’ – they form the ‘IFT’ initials of the whole institution. That reflects the Institute’s core beliefs: inspiration; a forward-looking spirit; and teamwork.

The new name for the Taipa campus building was chosen from suggestions generated in a competition held within the Institute. The name also aims to highlight the importance of the new site for the development of IFT, and the Institute’s positive view of the future.

At the beginning of academic year 2016/17, only parts of the Forward Building will be open to the public: other parts will be undergoing renovation work and upgrades.

“We got this building in October 2015,” Mr. Lai says. “We could not do many changes because we didn’t have much time for it.”

Plans for the Forward Building include eventually transferring there the IFT Multimedia Library – currently in the Mong-Há campus – but there is no final schedule for that.

“It is a very big building,” Mr. Lai says. “But it is also a very versatile building, with a structure based on columns, making it not too hard to adapt its layout.”

More space, improved quality

Macao’s Chief Executive, Dr. Chui Sai On, officially inaugurated the new facilities of IFT in Taipa in October last year. The Secretary-General of UNWTO, Dr. Taleb Rifai, and the Macao Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Dr. Alexis Tam Chon Weng, also attended the ceremony.

The Institute actually began using the new site in academic year 2015/16, namely part of the student accommodation at the 21-floor East Asia Hall. Students moved to the new dormitories in December last year.

“IFT currently is using almost half of that building as accommodation for students. The building is already hosting over 200 students,” says Mr. Lai.

East Asia Hall is designed for student accommodation. But IFT is considering using part of the building for other things, including: guestrooms for visitors from abroad; offices for faculty members; student leisure facilities; and areas for student extracurricular activities.

With more space available to IFT at the new Taipa campus, the Institute plans to undo some of the changes introduced to the Mong-Há campus over the years. At the time, those changes were made with the goal of making more space for academic operations. For example, at Pousada de Mong-Há, 10 rooms previously converted into offices for faculty members – reducing the total number of guestrooms at the educational hotel to 20 units – will be changed back once enough office space for lecturers is available at the Taipa campus.

A potential issue regarding the new site in Taipa is an undersupply of vehicle parking space. Mr. Lai says the Forward Building currently has approximately 50 reserved parking slots, but his team is looking into ways of increasing the number of spaces. IFT will continue to offer regular shuttle bus connections between both of its campuses, as it did previously between the Mong-Há campus and the César Fortune Building.

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