Bulletin

Issue: June 2005

People

Professor Lapolla to Chinese university post

La Trobe University Chair of Linguistics, Professor Randy LaPolla, has been selected by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has to help elevate a Chinese university to world class status.

It has included him among the 100 Cheung Kong Scholars to help advise and train people at 30 universities chosen for upgrading. Professor LaPolla is one of the few non-Chinese selected.

Cheung Kong Scholars are given a three-year tenure to assist one of 30 universities, chosen from China's 3,000 universities, for upgrading.

The appointees are called Cheung Kong Scholars because half of the funding is supplied by the Li Ka Shing Foundation of Hong Kong, which is supported by the conglomerate Cheung Kong Holdings. The name Cheung Kong also has symbolic significance, as it is the Chinese name for the Yangtze River, a symbol of China.

Professor LaPolla will take up a post in linguistics at the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing.

A distinguished world scholar in Sino-Tibetan languages, he will visit the University for at least two months a year for three years to advise the University on research and development, conduct his own research, give a lectures and advise postgraduate students.

Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Professor LaPolla received a BA in Asian Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1978 and an MA in Applied Linguistics (TESOL) from the same university in 1980.

He lived in China for three years, teaching for one year in Changsha and Shanghai, and studying for two in the Chinese Department of Peking University. He then went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a second MA and in 1990, a PhD in Linguistics.

After graduation he was given a position at the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan - the first westerner so appointed. He remained there for six years, also teaching part-time at Tsing Hua University as an adjunct associate professor for two years.

In 1996 he moved to City University of Hong Kong, where he was an associate professor until mid-2004, when he joined La Trobe.