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| To Elevate and Enhance |
In Academic Year (AY) 2011/2012, we enhanced our menu of educational programmes through a host of exciting and innovative initiatives and partnerships.
The new AY started in August 2011 with great fanfare with the opening of University Town (UTown) and two residential colleges, Cinnamon and Tembusu, welcoming their first residents.
Epitomising the spirit of learning and living the NUS way, UTown is a first for Singapore. Its concept calls for residential spaces, teaching facilities and study clusters to be interlaced, allowing learning to take place beyond the classroom. Featuring an Education Resource Centre comprising Computing Commons, a learning café, technology-infused seminar rooms and a multimedia hub, UTown is fast becoming an inviting hub for all NUS students.
Cinnamon College is home to the University Scholars Programme which now has a residential component. Tembusu College and eventually the other two residential colleges offer the University Town Residential Programme, a multidisciplinary academic programme which aims to cultivate critical thinking, effective communication skills and a holistic understanding of world issues. Complementing the formal curriculum are other learning opportunities that include the Master's Teas which are held in Tembusu and Cinnamon Colleges respectively to allow students to interact and exchange ideas with visiting speakers.
AY2011/2012 also saw the launch of the first interdisciplinary degree programme in environmental studies at NUS. The four-year direct Honours degree programme, which draws expertise from eight faculties, uses new pedagogies in environmental education. The programme responds to the need to develop expertise and nurture young talents who can think broadly and deeply about environmental issues, given the world's complex and interconnected environmental challenges today.
The new Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health was launched in September 2011, and named after NUS alumnus and Trustee Prof Saw Swee Hock in recognition of his invaluable philanthropic contributions.
The School strives to enhance its education of undergraduate medical students and intensify its research efforts in chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer and heart disease, as well as in health services.
NUS is increasingly offering students internships,
industrial attachments and professional placements as an integral part of the academic curriculum to bridge the transition between university and the workplace. Reinforcing our efforts in this area is the launch of NUSLEAD in September 2011, a programme which helps students develop their leadership skills. Through the programme, the students, who hail
from different countries and disciplines, can gain the necessary skills to become well-rounded leaders in their future careers.
NUSLEAD consists of three main components:
workshops, group projects and mentorship by industry leaders. In the pilot run, 27 NUS students successfully completed the programme. To recognise students who actively contribute to the
school community, the second run was extended to student leaders from all NUS clubs and societies, resulting in a cohort of 25 students.
Leveraging on new media, the University
further enriched the student learning experience and enhanced the delivery of quality teaching in the year of review.
The NUS Bulletin app was unveiled in September
2011 to allow students to read synopses of NUS modules anytime, anywhere. Similarly, we launched the NUS Integrated Virtual Learning Environment Communities app for students and staff so that they could check urgent announcements, email, read and reply forum posts, view files in workbins and access weblinks added by community members.
In October 2011, the Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory of Music, together with the Manhattan School of Music (New York), Peabody Institute (Baltimore) and Royal College of Music (London), hosted a groundbreaking, virtual conference on real-time distance learning. The "Music Anywhere, Anytime: the International Symposium on Synchronous Distance Learning" event was a shining example of pedagogical cross-continental interactions powered by the use of high-end video conferencing hardware and software in music education.
Teaching practices received a fillip from the launch of the Learning Activity Management Systems. With this new e-learning approach, teaching staff can create learning activity sequences using a visual authoring tool to design, manage and deliver online learning.
We are also continuing to enhance academic excellence through our professorship programmes. In AY2011/2012, several new professorships were established, including: |
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Kwa Geok Choo Professorship in Property Law, in honour of the late Madam Kwa, wife of former Singapore Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. The professorship is among
the programmes being supported by various corporations and law firms to enhance legal education and research in Singapore. |
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Two J Y Pillay Professorships. These professorships are among the initiatives launched to honour Prof Pillay and financed by a S$12.9 million fund donated by corporate and private donors led by Singapore Airlines and Singapore Exchange. Its aim is to draw academic luminaries to teach and conduct research at Yale-NUS College (Yale-NUS), which will welcome its first batch of students in August 2013. |
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Professorship in China and China Studies. This professorship was set up along with a programme in Chinese Culture and Civilisation at Yale-NUS, with a S$5 million gift pledged by the Tan Chin Tuan Foundation. It aims to perpetuate knowledge and understanding of China, as well as the study of Chinese history, culture and civilisation in Singapore. |
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S R Nathan Professorship in Social Work, to augment the Department of Social Work's unrelenting efforts to promote the development of social work in Singapore and beyond. |
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| Yale-NUS, a landmark collaboration between Yale University and NUS, continued to make steady progress towards its August 2013 opening. Besides a vigorous recruitment drive for both faculty and students, new degree programmes were also taking shape. Two of these programmes include the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Bachelor of Laws (Honours) Double Degree Programme offered by Yale-NUS and the NUS Faculty of Law; and the Concurrent Degree Programme offered by Yale-NUS and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which will award eligible students with a Master of Environmental Science or Master of Environmental Management degree from Yale. |
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| To Uplift and Inspire |
As a respected international and regional institution, we continue to play a pivotal role as a preferred partner and thought leader in Asia. Through partnerships with other leading universities and industry giants, we constantly expand the global educational and experiential exposure enjoyed by our undergraduate and graduate students.
In AY2011/2012, NUS teamed up with two major universities in China to offer double and concurrent degrees. These partnerships are another prime example of the University's multiple-pathway educational strategy.
The first Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was inked in September 2011 by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the Peking University's (PKU) School of Government. Under the five-year MOU, the two partners will collaborate on a double degree programme, which confers Master in Public Policy degrees from both NUS and PKU. This is the first such collaboration between the PKU School of Government and an Asian university.
The other MOU was signed in December 2011 between the law schools of NUS and Tsinghua University. The first collaboration of its kind with a Chinese University, this agreement will establish new programmes that will enable students to earn degrees from both institutions.
The two schools will also discuss cooperation at the graduate level, including a possible joint Master of Laws (LLM) degree.
In addition to providing global and cross-cultural exposure at overseas tertiary institutions, NUS also promotes experiential learning via industry experience. In line with this goal, the University sealed a three-year MOU with leading energy group
Total S.A. in March 2012. The MOU with Total S.A. and Total Oil Asia-Pacific opens up a host of internship opportunities for NUS students at the French group's Asia-Pacific offices.
With this new collaboration, there will be both NUS-conducted executive training programmes for Total employees and the Total Energy and Education Seminar for NUS faculty to facilitate exchange of academic and industry know-how.
In the area of thought leadership, NUS continued to make great strides. In October 2011, the World Trade Organization (WTO) together
with the University's Faculty of Law and Centre for International Law launched the WTO Chairs Programme (WCP) in Singapore.
The WCP aims to support and promote trade-related
academic activities by universities and research institutions in developing countries. After a competitive round of proposals involving 15 other world-class institutions, NUS emerged as the latest Chair, and will support WTO in areas of capacity building, research and outreach activities.
The University is also firmly committed to helping Singapore scale to new heights of technological and economic excellence. In March 2012, our Department of Information System set up the Centre for Health Informatics under the Singapore Government's Hybrid Skills Development Programme. The Programme equips infocomm professionals with in-depth industry domain knowledge and infocomm skills to help enterprises in various economic sectors leverage on infocomm for business growth. The Centre will be working with major healthcare and IT organisations to train up to 600 infocomm and 1,000 healthcare professionals on healthcare informatics over the next three years. |
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| To Go the Distance |
In AY2011/2012, we continued to enrich our students' educational experience through joint initiatives with various overseas institutions. A total of 47 new exchange partnerships were sealed with partner universities in Portugal, Turkey and Vietnam, bringing the total number of NUS student exchange partners to 3261. Overall, we sent out
some 1,700 students and received another 1,700 students on the Student Exchange Programme in the year of review.
Through the Global Opportunities programmes, the NUS International Relations Office offered over 45 international summer programmes, research attachments and internships, benefitting more than 500 students.
The Santander Undergraduate Research
Exchange (SURE) Programme supported by funding from Santander Bank, for example, provides undergraduate students with opportunities to be mentored and guided by top researchers at renowned
partner universities, including Brown University, Imperial College London and Tsinghua University.
At the start of AY2011/2012, six NUS students departed for New Haven under the inaugural Yale Visiting International Student Program (Y-VISP). As part of Y-VISP, our undergraduates enrol for Yale courses for a full academic year. They take classes
and participate in extracurricular activities alongside their Yale counterparts while living in the university's residential colleges.
Another group of students embarked on
the inaugural Study Trip for Engagement and EnRichment (STEER) programme to Vietnam in December 2011. STEER is designed to familiarise students with the diverse socio-cultural-economic-political-business environment of fast-evolving countries through classroom-based learning and experiential site visits.
Partnering with Vietnam National University, Hanoi, students from both institutions worked on joint projects relating to social service and corporate social responsibility sectors in Southeast Asia and Vietnam under the theme "Social Entrepreneurship and Community Development". |
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As at 31 July 2012 and inclusive of university-wide and faculty-level partners. |
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| NEW PROGRAMMES FOR ACADEMIC YEAR 2011/2012 |
| Joint Degree Programme |
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Joint Bachelor of Music, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University |
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| Concurrent Degree Programmes |
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Bachelor of Computing (Computer Science) and Scientiae Magister in Computer Science, NUS School of Computing and Brown University |
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Bachelor of Computing (Electronic Commerce) and Master of Science in Engineering & Technology Innovation Management, NUS School of Computing and Carnegie Mellon University |
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| Other Degree Programme |
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Bachelor of Environmental Studies |
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