Learn to Serve, Serve to Learn: Introduction to Service-Learning

Dr NGAI, Grace

Grace graduated from Brown University and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. Since starting her career at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, she has successfully pioneered a number of teaching initiatives, one of the most prominent being Service-Learning. She brings students on service projects in Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, Cambodia, and Rwanda.

Together with her team, she proposed one of the first Service-Learning subjects at PolyU, and she has been instrumental in the effort to support and promote PolyU’s Service-Learning initiative. She was the founding coordinator of the Sub-committee for Service-Learning Subjects, which oversees the approval and offering of all Service-Learning subjects, and the co-facilitator of the Community of Practice on Service-learning. Through numerous T&L projects, they have initiated workshops, seminars, and salons on topics in offering, assessing, and conducting scholarly work in Service-Learning.

From 6 subjects and 200 students in 2012, as of 2016, PolyU has over 50 regularly-offered subjects which cater to over 4,000 students every year. Her team was awarded the Hong Kong University Grants Committee Teaching Award in 2016.