Up, Up and Away

Despite being only a couple of years into this flexible curriculum, students at the two Colleges have responded positively and are actively seeking synergy and interplay between disciplines. For example, popular cross-faculty combinations of majors at CHS include Data Science and Economics, and Life Sciences and Psychology. Other students are pursuing more unusual pathways to graduation, such as Physics majors who read minors in languages. Feedback from FASS and FoS alumni has been similarly positive, with many demonstrating their support by contributing to mentorship and career preparation programmes. 

“The jobs of the not-too-distant future will invariably require individuals who can provide working solutions that leverage whatever information is available,” says Professor Lionel Wee (Arts and Social Sciences ’88), Dean of FASS and Co-Dean of CHS. Take the fast-growing sustainability sector, for instance — sustainability issues are very complex, and solving these requires the ability to look at the bigger picture and consider not just environmental but also political, economic, social and technological factors. “We make our students comfortable with looking across different domains for relevant ideas and information, and combining these towards the best possible solutions,” Prof Wee notes. 

His fellow Co-Dean, FoS’ Dean Professor Sun Yeneng, adds that interdisciplinary training lends a competitive advantage in an uncertain future of work: “Just as we are now grappling with the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, on our work and livelihoods, I envisage that the job market will continue to be shaped and impacted by disruptive technologies in the future, requiring our graduates to be adaptable to change. CHS offers an education that prepares our students for a wide variety of career opportunities, and even for new occupations that will emerge as the job market evolves.” 

Over at CDE, students have also responded warmly to the revamped curriculum. One of its most popular undergraduate offerings is the Innovation & Design Programme (iDP). Available as a second major or a minor, it equips aspiring technopreneurs with the tools and processes to create new products and services, from ideation to prototyping. “The iDP gives students across different disciplines the opportunity to work in teams to solve real-world problems through project-based learning in areas such as healthcare, sustainable cities and urban mobility,” says Professor Teo Kie Leong (Engineering (PhD) ’97), Acting Dean and Deputy Dean (Academic Affairs & Education) of CDE. “Engineering students have learnt much from the perspectives shared by Architecture and Design teammates [and vice versa]. Such collaborative work benefits their learning journey and builds the skills needed to deal with an increasingly interconnected workforce.” 

More new courses are being developed by CDE and CHS — particularly in growth industries, such as sustainability, computing, data science, health sciences, food science and technology, and the care economy — with some set to debut in the coming academic year. Looking beyond the two Colleges, NUS eventually plans to make interdisciplinarity a central feature across all faculties and schools by implementing the Common Curriculum at scale. Tech-enhanced learning will go a long way towards achieving this. For instance, the CHS Common Curriculum has innovative modules that use a blend of pre-recorded lectures and “live” Zoom conversations with instructors, or combine small-group field trips to various sites in Singapore with virtual reality (VR) field trips. As Prof Thean says, it is about “finessing, fine-tuning and amplifying” the good work that has already been done. 
  

ACADEMICS AND BEYOND 

A full educational experience does not stop at attending lectures, completing assignments and sitting for exams. Other aspects — including friendships and connections, student life, and work immersion and overseas opportunities — are just as, if not more, memorable. “I believe there is a strong relationship between what students experience at university and how they ultimately turn out as graduates and successful adults,” says Prof Thean about the role of student life in education. “We need to better understand this correlation and pursue avenues for innovation in student engagement.” 

Irrespective of faculty or school, all NUS students are offered experiential learning in the form of internships, overseas study programmes and co-curricular activities. Following the greater emphasis on building and supporting mental wellness and resilience, the University set up a Health & Wellbeing team that focuses on providing counselling services as well as wellness consultancy and resources for staff and students. Different housing options have also created a vibrant student community who live on campus. 

Many of those living on campus are based in UTown’s residential colleges, where students from diverse disciplines and backgrounds live and learn together through a specially curated academic curriculum. Taking this concept one step further is the new NUS College (NUSC) — the University’s first honours college with a rigorous, broad-based curriculum and a strong residential component. NUSC welcomed its first batch of close to 400 students from all over the world in August 2022, taking up six to seven per cent of the entire undergraduate cohort. 

NUSC combines the best features of the former University Scholars Programme and Yale-NUS College (which will close its doors in 2025, after its current students have graduated). Students can choose from more than 50 majors offered by other colleges, faculties and schools within NUS, while setting aside about a third of their degree requirements for the NUSC curriculum. What really sets this curriculum apart is its array of special experiential programmes that reflect NUSC’s mission to “break open the classroom”. 

For example, the Global Experience (GEx) course enables students to go on themed visits to major cities around the world and interact with local academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, start-ups and community organisations. It takes place over one month during the summer vacation. This year, NUSC students are travelling to cities like Stockholm (under the “Environment and Sustainability” theme) and Tokyo (“City, Culture and Technology”).  
Another flagship programme at NUSC is the Impact Experience (IEx) course, where students form interdisciplinary teams and work with community partners to co‑develop solutions to pressing community problems, either in Singapore or regionally. Each team tackles a cause it is passionate about, such as environmental and cultural conservation, digital social good, food security, or healthcare and housing accessibility. The capstone course spans one to two years so that student teams have ample time to design, plan, pitch and execute their projects, hopefully culminating in sustained social impact. “The complex problems of today, like AI, climate change and inequality, require people from diverse disciplines to work together to solve them. Success in the world — as well as solving its problems — depends on more than just one smart person acting alone. NUSC embraces that challenge by bringing together ‘un-likeminded’ students to address real-world problems,” says Professor Simon Chesterman, Dean of NUSC and Vice Provost (Educational Innovation) of NUS. 

He adds, “The only constant these days is change. There are many ‘unknown unknowns’, and we don’t know what new jobs will emerge in the next five years. But what we can do is give students the skills, perspectives, values and friends to help them confront whatever lies ahead — the ability to see a problem from diverse viewpoints, to engage with diverse actors, and to be flexible and resilient.” 

FUELLING THE INNOVATION PIPELINE 

The fact that NUS has gained renown as a research-intensive university owes much to Professor Chen Tsuhan, who has been instrumental in carrying out its well-thought-out research strategy over the past five years. As the former Deputy President (Research & Technology), he oversaw all research activities across the University’s colleges, faculties and schools, research institutes and centres, as well as corporate laboratories and technology consortia. These broad-based research efforts and resources have been pooled into key research clusters that meet the national agenda, most notably the Smart Nation cluster. With Prof Liu Bin taking on the role of Deputy President (Research & Technology), she will work in concert with Prof Chen, who is now Deputy President (Innovation & Enterprise), to ensure NUS remains at the forefront of research and innovation. 

Prof Liu singles out three research areas that have the potential to grow and join the Smart Nation cluster as “mega clusters” in the coming years: 

1. Sustainability: Programmes focus on areas like agri-food technology, coastal protection, nature-based climate solutions, water management, urban heat resilience and green energy. 
2. Materials: NUS is designing, developing and synthesising advanced and intelligent functional materials for a wide range of smart applications.
3. Health innovation: Pioneering research in health science and medicine to transform scientific insights into tangible health benefits.  

Within each integrated cluster, researchers work in project teams that cut across disciplines — and collaborate with external partners in government, industry and international institutions — to innovate and develop applicable and scalable solutions. 

“NUS has visible peaks of excellence. But we need more groundbreaking and new field-opening research to lead future ‘hot’ areas,” says Prof Liu, who most recently served as Senior Vice Provost (Faculty & Institutional Development) of NUS. She also believes there is room for improvement when translating fundamental research into practical applications. Hosting more “living labs” on campus — open innovation ecosystems where NUS researchers and students work with multiple stakeholders to co-create, testbed and scale up solutions in a realistic operational environment, refining these as they go — may hold the answer. 

On the entrepreneurial side, Prof Chen says, “Innovation and entrepreneurship provide a platform to take ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace, where they can make a real impact on society. This is particularly exciting in a higher education setting because universities are often hotbeds of cutting-edge research. By connecting the dots between research and innovation, I hope to drive NUS forward in this exciting space.” 

Prof Chen points to the proliferation of start-ups coming out of NUS, as well as the significant external funding these have received, as a testament to the University’s achievements in research commercialisation. Many companies had their beginnings in the undergraduate-level NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme, with NOC alumni subsequently founding successful start-ups like Carousell, Patsnap, ShopBack and Zopim. Another game-changer is the NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP), which supports postgraduate students and research staff in launching deep‑tech spin‑offs. 

“I’m working closely with my NUS Enterprise colleagues to identify areas for enhancement and streamline initiatives along three key pillars: NUS Enterprise Academy, Ecosystem Builder, and Technology Transfer and Innovation. This will bring greater clarity to help our start-ups and stakeholders better navigate and participate in our ecosystem,” Prof Chen explains. “Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025) plan gives impetus for us to rethink how we can bridge the gap between academia and industry to ensure that our research is translated into practical solutions that benefit society.” 

Of course, all this hinges on securing the right talent and infrastructure. Both professors aim to bring faculty and researchers closer into NUS’ innovation and enterprise ecosystem. Being acclaimed researchers themselves — Prof Chen in AI and Prof Liu in functional materials — will certainly help, as they are intimately acquainted with the challenges involved and know exactly what is needed to bring ideas to fruition. Adds Prof Liu, “Social scientists have an important role to play in addressing complex challenges, such as climate change and sustainability. I hope to create sparks between STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and non-STEM researchers by facilitating extensive research collaborations.” 

STRENGTHENING THE ALUMNI NETWORK 

Taking over the reins at the NUS Office of Alumni Relations (OAR) is Ms Ovidia Lim-Rajaram (Arts and Social Sciences ’89), who left her post as NUS Chief Communications Officer to take on this new challenge. Not only does that make her the first-ever Chief Alumni Officer of NUS, she is also the first female alumni leader in the University’s history.

Ms Lim-Rajaram heads a refreshed team at OAR. Together, they coordinate myriad outreach and engagement programmes for the close to 350,000-strong global alumni community. Ongoing initiatives — including the support given to Alumni Groups and Overseas Chapters, the always-popular thought leadership talks by NUS professors, and other events and activities — will carry on under the new leadership. This is in addition to the efforts taken elsewhere at NUS, such as inviting NOC and GRIP alumni back to mentor younger batches, or having alumni provide internship opportunities to students from the same faculty. 

“At the same time, we’re exploring more meaningful ways of engaging with our alumni, both in Singapore and overseas. We hope to get to know them better and adopt a data-informed approach to alumni engagement, so that we can do things that will resonate with them,” says Ms Lim-Rajaram. While grateful for the steadfast support shown by senior alumni towards OAR’s events and activities, she notes, “The profile of our alumni has been changing with every NUS Commencement. Today, more than 45 per cent of our alumni are under 40, so we’re looking into how we can help them better navigate the different stages of career and life.” 

In today’s workplace, where upskilling and interdisciplinary knowledge are essential to stay industry-relevant, the alumni-only NUS Lifelong Learners (L³) programme becomes even more important. L³ makes student enrolment valid for 20 years and beyond from the point of undergraduate or postgraduate admission. Alumni can thus enjoy discounted access to hundreds of Continuing Education and Training (CET) courses provided by NUS colleges, faculties and schools. These vary in duration and delivery mode, and cover in-demand skills required by Industry 4.0 as well as the green, digital and care economies. “Looking ahead, we could pilot new ideas to incorporate campus life into CET programmes,” Prof Thean suggests. 

This forward-thinking mindset, and such willingness to experiment and innovate, is the very reason behind the University’s leadership renewal. “In the midst of a global environment that is constantly changing, it is crucial to be nimble,” says NUS President Prof Tan. “I am confident my senior leadership colleagues can bring fresh and excellent ideas to the table to keep NUS energised and at the top of its game.” 

    
Text by Wanda Tan