UMacau offers an increasingly international milieu for students

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A diverse learning environment, the University of Macau (UMacau) draws about a third of its students from outside the territory and offers a range of exchange options for studying overseas. Non-local students come from mainland China and around the globe, while the academic staff come from a mix of backgrounds, making for a rich culture at the institution.

Undergraduate student Candy Ka-kei Wu is majoring in electromechanical engineering, a four-year course that is mostly made up of male students. A Macau resident, Wu wanted to study close to home. “UMacau was my first choice because it’s the best university in Macau and there are a lot of choices in what to study. Actually, it’s also the only place to offer electromechanical engineering,” she says.

Wu enjoys the general education courses that she can take to supplement her degree. So far, she has taken courses in Spanish, Portuguese, psychology and art. The perfect example of an inquisitive UMacau student, Wu says the general education courses enable her to meet a lot of international students, which she enjoys as she learns about different ways of thinking and studying. Her own course is mostly made up of Macau residents and Mainland Chinese students.

Doctoral graduate Jiao Zhang, who is from the mainland, took a Master’s in Law at UMacau, covering international law, European Union law and comparative law and went on to  complete a PhD in European Union Law. “Studying international law, I wanted to study in English as that’s a basic requirement and I thought it would broaden my research horizons,” Zhang explains.

The distinguished academic staff were also an attraction. These include Professor Lingliang Zeng, former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Wuhan University, Professor Francis Snyder, a well-known expert in EU law and Professor Peter Wesley Smith, former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Hong Kong University. “UMacau is the best choice in Greater China for studying EU law. “There are lots of great resources to support me,” Zhang says. These include the Jean Monnet Programme, an EU-funded research and teaching project. The University also had good connections for aiding her study and building her personal network.

Zhang says she had yearned for global experiences and Macau was perfect for her – hailing from Shanghai, she was close enough to home, yet experienced a more Westernised lifestyle and encountered new cultures, while being taught by international staff. “It is different, but I still felt at home. I loved studying at UMacau and I loved living in Macau,” she says. While a scholarship helped Zhang to complete her degrees, she says it was both her study experience and the good international friends she made that will stay with her for life.