Commentary
Nanyang Technology University: 50th Anniversary Convocation Address
Dr. Su Guaning
President of the Nanyang Technological University
July 11, 2005
Good morning and welcome to the 50th Anniversary Convocation of the Nanyang Technological University!
Fifty years ago, our forefathers built on this beautiful campus a new university, the Nanyang University. It served as the beacon of light for the Chinese community. Generations of students educated in the Chinese stream looked upon this university as their ultimate goal in education.
Today, Nanyang Technological University serves all communities in Singapore and sixty countries around the world. As the dominant international language, English is our primary language of instruction. But we have also built capabilities for instruction in other languages. We are developing a multicultural university and positioning ourselves as a Global University of Excellence.
We are building bridges with China, India and the Malay Archipelago. We are establishing research collaboration with the very best in the west. Drawing upon our heritage for inspiration and using it as a base to build upon, we look towards the future by building upon our strengths in science and technology and contributing to the advancement of mankind and the future of Singaporeans.
What will we be fifty years from now when we celebrate our centennial?
A hundred years is a long time.
A university is not built in a day. California Institute of Technology, was originally Throop Polytechnic, for over 20 years. Changing the name in 1920, recruiting prominent academics from the east, Robert Millikan, Nobel laureates built, by the decade of the 1930s, an international powerhouse with amazing influence despite its small size.
Stanford University , a good regional school, was propelled into the leading ranks of universities worldwide when Frederick Terman, Dean of Engineering unleashed the power of technology and entrepreneurship in 1950. With William Hewlett and David Packard leading the way out of the garage, the establishment of Stanford Industrial Park directly led to the transformation of Stanford and the vibrant enterprise ecosystem in Silicon Valley. In twenty years, Stanford leapfrogged many universities to international distinction. Virtually every department, not just engineering, is in the top ten, whether it is English or Music.
Nanyang University and Nanyang Technological University have a colourful history. People still argue today about which pieces are part of our history. Even many of our historical archives lie elsewhere, because no unambiguous consensus has been forged on a definitive history. But we who have been entrusted with the helm of this university cannot afford to dwell on the past. Our responsibility must be primarily towards the future generations of students to come into Yunnan Garden, and the communities and nations that they serve.
The creation of autonomous universities by 2006 and the assurance of core funding is an opportunity for Singaporean universities to take off. Our peer institutions are running hard in this marathon. If we want to keep up and to move into the lead, we cannot afford to dwell on the past and dissipate our energy on petty squabbling. It is time to move decisively forward to create the powerhouse that the founders envisaged.
Fast forward another fifty years to the year 2055. Our students today will be senior citizens. Most of our faculty will not be around. What do we hope to see?
We most definitely do not want the people in 2055 to look back on the year 2005 as an opportunity lost, a heartbreak moment, when we missed the opportunity to vault into the top ranked universities of the world. No one wants to see an also-ran, second best, a respectable university but with nowhere near the impact of a University of California, Berkeley, or a University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
What we would like to see instead, is a university with spirit, a university with courage, energized for the future, making a real difference. Science and technology must play a major part in such a future, just as it plays a major role at Stanford University. We want, in the year 2055, to look back at 2005 as Stanford graduates today look back at 1950, when Frederick Terman energized Stanford for takeoff.
We must respect our heritage but break out of the historical burden to achieve such distinction. Not only will our alumni and supporters cheer this on, even supporters of NUS, our friendly rival across town, would and should cheer secretly. They too need a good sparring partner, as Stanford had become to the earlier prominence of University of California, Berkeley across the San Francisco Bay.
Our university leadership has gathered on a number of occasions to forge a consensus on our future directions. Our Council has debated and participated in bringing this consensus to a higher plane. Council Chairman Mr Koh Boon Hwee and I have met with Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan and Minister for Education, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Things are cooking.
But I hope you will forgive me for keeping mum for the time being. There is a good reason for this.
On the 29th of August, a 50th anniversary celebration unlike any other will be held in Yunnan Garden. It will be graced by our Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong. He will make a keynote address concerning the university to the students, faculty and alumni gathered in Yunnan Garden.
At the celebration, we shall honour our heritage and celebrate the future. The torch shall be passed from one generation to the next, culminating in a giant carnival of students, alumni, staff and friends in this new University Quadrangle just outside the Auditorium. The opening of the School of Biological Sciences Building by the Prime Minister shall symbolize our drive for the future.
This year, we graduate 6190 students in 14 separate ceremonies. We are immensely proud of them. They are the vanguard of our drive to be a Global University of Excellence.
The 50th Anniversary of the university in Yunnan Garden also sees us turning comprehensive. In two weeks, all three new Schools, the School of Art, Design and Media, the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences will be in full swing, enriching immeasurably the course offerings and campus life.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences is off to a good start. The entering class, the pioneer class this year, is of high quality. They refute outdated notions that the Arts subjects are for less able students. We are maintaining and enhancing the standards as we see the students in this new School as pioneers of a new model of humanities and social sciences education. We want them to be all-rounders with a keen appreciation of human complexities and high EQ, equally at home reciting poetry in public or making presentations in boardrooms.
Our Nanyang Business School was the only Singaporean Business School ranked in the world's top 100 MBAs by the Economist Intelligence Unit. This makes them number four in Asia and the best in South East Asia. Our Business and Accountancy graduates continue to be highly sought-after by employers.
The National Institute of Education goes from strength to strength as they partner the Ministry of Education in strengthening our schools. International recognition has resulted in a demand for consulting from NIE to help other countries.
Our Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, founded by no less than our Chancellor and President of the Republic, Mr S.R. Nathan, has become a mandatory destination for military officers in our region and beyond, and a world renowned authority on terrorism.
The School of Communication and Information has, as usual, many more applicants than it can take in. Their intake quality compares with the law school and I like to think they have more interesting students. We envisage leading the way to establish our own brand of responsible journalism without losing vibrancy and diversity of views, to become the leading Communications school for Asia.
The new School of Art, Design and Media is closely allied to the entertainment industry and poised to be another star NTU attraction like the Communications School and our very own Stefanie Sun. Even before we started the school formally, we have already played host to LucasFilm in wooing them to set up shop in Singapore. The Hollywood special effects guru, Nickson Fong, is our Adjunct Faculty member. We have struck up a relationship with the University of Southern California Film School, the base camp of Hollywood, and the Beijing Film Academy, alma mater of Zhang Yimou. Our new Dean was a Vice President at Walt Disney and continues to be involved in making movies. This is a star-studded School with an incoming star-studded class. I'm really looking forward to seeing their names in the credits of blockbusters in Hollywood and Bollywood, Beijing and Cannes in the near future.
What better year to start our School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences than the centenary year of Einstein's landmark papers of 1905, an amazing flowering of fundamental discoveries revolutionizing science and the world in the 20th century. Our new school, like the School of Biological Sciences unencumbered by past baggage, starts off with scientific areas closely allied with, and reinforcing, the major research and development areas for Singapore, including life sciences, nanotechnology and information technology.
The College of Engineering, fully 60% of the university, is reinventing itself. No longer do we see our role as turning out massive numbers of manufacturing engineers as that is no longer the demands of Singapore.
Our new engineering degree programmes have received overwhelming response. We established the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, our sixth Engineering School, and the new Aerospace Engineering programme in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Both have attracted great interest and competition for places among top quality students. We are also working on reinventing the established engineering schools to develop graduates for the research and development- oriented high technology economy that Singapore is building.
To give our science and technology initiatives a Nobel boost, an Institute that may very well develop future Nobel winners is being formed, bringing together the best of our science and engineering schools.
The Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton was the refuge that sheltered Albert Einstein when he escaped Nazi tyranny in his native Germany. He remained there for the rest of his life.
The first Nobel Prize winners of Chinese origin, Professor C.N. Yang and Professor T.D. Lee, did their work at the same institute.
I am pleased to announce that Nanyang Technological University is setting up an Institute of Advanced Studies. Seven Nobel laureates, Professor C.N. Yang among them, have accepted our invitation to be advisors to this institute. Professor Phua Kok Khoo is the founding Director of this Institute.
A hallmark of this institute shall be science at the highest level, an interdisciplinary study of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology as fundamentals, with materials, electronics, nanotechnology, computing and engineering as applications. Our very best faculty will, through the new Institute, rub shoulders and share living accommodation with the brightest brains around the world.
We shall be embarking on an ambitious recruitment drive of new, young faculty members, with the help of our prominent international advisors, to totally transform our work on science and technology in a decade.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew exhorted our universities to attract the best of Singapore talent and to attract international talents to our shores.
Beyond our instructional programmes with the possibility of double majors, minors and electives, we are working to make our undergraduate experience a truly international one.
We launched our Global Immersion Programme in July 2004. The first group of 180 students has just returned from their six months immersion in China and the United States with glowing reports. Even as we speak, we are expanding the scope to Europe and India. Designed and tailored for Singaporeans, the programme grooms our own international talent, equally comfortable venturing out to Shanghai or Mumbai, Paris or Seattle.
Through this programme, we offer an ideal middle ground between sending our children overseas and studying in a Singaporean institution. We intend to provide eventually all our students a year's experience away from Singapore.
Also in the cards are double degree and joint degree programmes with top international universities for students enrolled at NTU, with two years here and two years abroad. They will have the best of both worlds, a top international education while remaining closely connected with Singapore.
The new autonomy framework created by the Government will empower us to bring in private sector financing and development capability to enhance the Nanyang Undergraduate Experience.
In our blueprint is living space for an expanded intake of 22,300 undergraduates on campus by 2010, and our very own little Bohemia fashioned after Harvard Square. The building of 25 new halls is a long-term investment to provide a fertile environment for creation and experimentation, leadership development and largesse. As a fully residential university, NTU will be a microcosm of Singapore, where real businesses can take root, and learning is genuine, enduring, and exciting. The experience will be international and cosmopolitan as well, as we increase our foreign student intake and our Global Immersion Programme partners begin to send their students to us, in their own drives to be global universities.
This year, our graduating class has made an immensely important gesture. They have pooled together a class gift to the university. The amount may be modest, but it is tremendously important as the symbol of their commitment to the university.
To mark their graduation and their gift, we are placing a class plaque in the new Quadrangle for the Class of 2005, the first one in a ring.
While this will be a tradition going forward, we are also going back to our earlier graduating classes and encouraging them to organize themselves in a similar way. The amount does not matter; it is the organization and the thought that counts. More plaques will be placed in response to the organizing of more classes from among our alumni. Eventually, perhaps in our centennial year in 2055, we shall complete the circle and start a new one.
Dear Class of 2005, we have come this far in just 50 years, think what more we can achieve in the next 50.
While I may not be around to witness it, I know you will. And I am sure you will witness the occasion with pride, thinking back to the day fifty years earlier, when you stood here in Nanyang Auditorium, proudly receiving your degree from our Chancellor, the President of the Republic of Singapore.
I wish you the very best in your careers. Congratulations!
