Courses

Morningside students complete a 6-unit College General Education (CGE) requirement prior to graduating. Your first CGE course, GEMC1001 Current Dilemmas and Their Histories, is taken in Term 1 of your first year at CUHK and is designed to inspire you to explore perennial questions of human existence and human values.  This is your chance to get to know other Morningsiders, College Fellows, and Junior Fellows in the classroom. Your second CGE course, GEMC3001, taken in Year 2 or 3, encourages you to identify how you can be of service to others and how civic engagement can become an integral part of your life's work. Contact the Dean of General Education with questions.

GEMC1001 Current Dilemmas and Their Histories

You aspire to be a concert pianist, but a degree in Business will pay the bills. Do you major in Music? Or follow your father into Business? A critically ill patient suffering from a highly communicable disease has just been brought in to the emergency room; you are the frontline emergency medic on duty. Do you scrub up and don protective gear, knowing that you could be putting the patient’s life in jeopardy? Or do you attend to the patient immediately and risk contracting the illness yourself? These are just two examples of the many dilemmas that Morningside students consider in the Freshman Seminar “Current Dilemmas and their Histories”. College Fellows introduce dilemmas and philosophical frameworks; Morningsiders discuss and debate in small group tutorials led by Junior Fellows.

GEMC3001 Service Learning/Civic Engagement

The Service Learning/Civic Engagement component of Morningside College’s General Education Programme gives students the opportunity to engage in substantive service work. The goal of the course is to allow students to apply in practical settings for the benefit of others some of what they are learning in the classroom, and to help them discover how they can make their own positive impact on the world.

At the completion of the Service Learning Project students will be prepared to: 

• recognize pressing societal issues in Hong Kong and the wider world;
• assess the resources available and determine what is important to communities in need;
• evaluate a range of possible methods and responses;
• combine prior classroom knowledge with experiences/observations in the field to make decisions and solve problems;
• understand root issues underlying community needs;
• consider service not as a one-off experience, but as a lifetime commitment.

You might learn how a local animal rescue organization works, serve the elderly in China, educate children in Nepal, or monitor food waste right here on campus. Regardless of your service focus, consider weaving our College values – scholarship, virtue, service – into your commitment to serving the community at home and elsewhere.

Morningside students should submit their project proposals electronically to gemc@cuhk.edu.hk before they begin their service learning work. Each student should provide his/her supervisor with a copy of the College’s Supervisor Evaluation form before the work begins. Be sure to discuss the significance of your service project with your supervisor and encourage him/her to contact your tutor or the Dean of General Education if questions arise.

To download relevant forms or documents, including a list of local NGOs, please click here.