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From the President’s desk
1 July 2011
Today marks my first day as the President of NTU. I am honoured and humbled to be asked by the Board of Trustees to lead this wonderful university. This is a huge responsibility for me and I will do my best to live up to it and further NTU’s mission.
On this day, I can’t help but think about the first day I set foot on this campus. I came to NTU in 2001 as President of Linkoping University when we were discussing a collaboration with NTU. I came back again in 2006 when I was part of an overseas advisory panel invited by Dr Tony Tan, Chairman of Singapore’s National Research Foundation, to help Singapore develop its research strategy. As a scientist researching artificial leaves, I felt at home immediately in the lush greenery of this campus.
After four years as Provost, I hand over the role of Provost today to Professor Freddy Boey, previously the Chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Like me, Freddy is passionate about research and we see a symbiotic relationship between research and education. We will be supported by a new management team with several new appointments to take charge of key areas that we want to focus on and we look forward to working with them.
A university is a living organism. Its role is not just to transfer knowledge to the younger generation but to also be at the forefront of knowledge creation and innovation so as to expand our collective knowledge as a society and make the world a better place.
Indeed, in this global age, our students must be prepared for a more complex working world and be educated beyond their core disciplines. They need to have a keen sense of entrepreneurship and understand the intricacies of globalisation. Through new learning pedagogies, the use of information and communication technologies, group-based and self-directed learning, students will become active consumers of knowledge.
Under the Blue Ribbon Commission, the revamp of the undergraduate programme will begin with our newest cohort of freshmen next month. Students will have far greater flexibility to design their curriculum according to their interests and strengths.
With a wide range of disciplines offered by the 12 schools in the four colleges of engineering, business, science and humanities, arts and social sciences, students can create their own unique combinations of multi-disciplinary knowledge.
In my years as a Trustee of the Nobel Foundation, I have witnessed first-hand how new knowledge is found where traditional disciplines overlap. With NTU’s Five Peaks of Excellence – Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road and Innovation Asia – NTU aims to put our global stamp in these critical and evolving cross-disciplinary areas.
Besides supporting the needs of the country, the role of a university is to prepare students so they can take charge of their future. I know Asian students are very conscientious and take their studies very seriously. That is not to be scoffed at, but can perhaps be balanced with some elements of fun.
One of my goals is to enhance NTU’s vibrancy with new infrastructure and cross-campus activities where students and faculty can interact and have fun, build personal networks and share ideas and ideals. Falling in love and finding a life partner while in university will be a bonus!
I am very keen to introduce more vibrancy because like the hostelites, I live and work on campus. We can do more to quicken its pulse. I like to kick-start my mornings and end my evenings by jogging around campus. Sometimes, my wife (who lectures at the School of Biological Sciences) joins me. As I am pounding the pavement, I can feel how quiet the campus is at that time of the day as all I hear is the sound of my breath!
Besides jogging around campus, I also plan to walk the grounds more. I sometimes drop in on students at the library before exams and at the canteen during lunch. I never pre-plan these moments because I am one for spontaneity.
A few weeks ago, I was filming an interview for BBC World when the crew wanted to take some footage of me walking up the stairs. A student saw me and started talking to me without realising we were filming and the crew chased him out of the shot. Now, who says Singapore students are shy and not forthcoming? Certainly not those here at NTU!
To have open communication and greater transparency, I plan to create more opportunities – both informal and formal – so that the faculty, staff, students and alumni can offer their ideas and give feedback to the management team.
Many of you are probably wondering what I intend to build as the hallmarks of my presidency. I will share my plans in greater detail at the State of the University Address on 25 August 2011 as to how I will build on NTU’s strong foundations and further fuel our growth and success.
Here I will just touch briefly on the new medical school and internationalisation of NTU. With the support of the Ministry of Education and NTU Board of Trustees, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine is a project that I have been personally driving from its first day.
A joint school with Imperial College London partly located at the new Novena Campus, it will nevertheless be integrated with the rest of NTU. At this stage of NTU’s evolution and growth, having a medical school will bring so many untold opportunities that will further strengthen NTU as a university.
I am determined to develop a first-class medical school at NTU that will train top students into a new generation of doctors who puts the patient at the heart of their service and has the medical and technology expertise to improve the lives of Singaporeans.
I will also focus on further enhancing NTU’s reputation overseas. As a foreigner who has worked in different parts of the world, I have always felt that NTU is more famous overseas than in Singapore. However, we need to further grow this. We will continue to blaze the trail in research globally. We will attract even more “global giants” to join our faculty so our students can be mentored by the leading lights in academia. Our local talents will have opportunities to shine on the international platform. We have already attracted top partners like Imperial College London, Cambridge, Technical University of Munich and more; we will make further inroads into China and India.
But having all these without the top young students to mould is like laying out a feast at your house with no guests. One of my priorities is therefore to attract the best minds to NTU and convince them that NTU should be their first choice. We already are the university of choice for the lion’s share of the brightest overseas research fellows who come to Singapore through the National Research Foundation. The senior management team and I will make it a priority to interact and meet with prospective undergraduates, parents and teachers more so they can better understand NTU’s strengths and pick NTU as their top choice.
Of course, a university is not made overnight and I am grateful for the foundation laid down by the first two presidents – Prof Su Guaning and his predecessor, Professor Cham Tao Soon.
Yesterday, we held a symposium and appreciation dinner in honour of Guaning’s contributions during his nine-year term as President of NTU. For those of you who couldn’t be there, please join me and Freddy in expressing my heartfelt thanks to him for his hard work and commitment during his tenure. I have enjoyed my last four years working with him and appreciate the counsel that he had given me during this time.
Guaning transformed NTU into a more research-intensive university and expanded the range of disciplines with three new schools – the School of Art, Design and Media, which is Singapore’s only professional art school, the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
As the third President, I am privileged to be able to build on the solid foundation of my predecessors. I look forward to working with all of you to make NTU a global university that all Singaporeans will be truly proud of.
I hope all faculty, staff, students and alumni will join me in this exciting journey as we charge ahead!
Yours,
Bertil Andersson
President | 