Commentary

State of the University Address 2006: A Good University Teaches, a Great University Transforms People

Professor Shih Choon Fong
President, National University of Singapore
October 20 2006, University Cultural Centre

A Time to Recognize, A Time to Celebrate

A good university teaches. A great university transforms people. People, people, people.

Good morning, Pro-Chancellors, Board of Trustees, colleagues, students, alumni and friends. We have many people here.People of different ages. People with different interests. People of different aspirations. We are here because we share a common interest – this University.

This is a morning of celebration.

First, we are inaugurating our Centennial Professorships.

All six professors so honored are people of great gifts. They are recognized world wide for their contributions to their fields.In fact, The Straits Times carried an article on our Centennial Professors this morning.

Of equal joy is that these professorships are endowed by people who care – visionary benefactors who encourage us through their generosity of spirit. Thank you.

Second, we are celebrating our global standing.

The London Times Higher Education Supplement ranked us in the world's top 20 and Asia's top 3. Newsweek ranked us 31st in the world and top 3 in Asia and Australasia. While we should not focus excessively on media rankings, they nevertheless reflect a general perception of our collective efforts as a community of people.My congratulations and thanks to every one of you.

Running Faster, Running With Purpose

In our ongoing quest for global excellence, I am reminded of the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Through the Looking Glass.

Despite running her fastest, Alice observes that she hasn't moved one bit. The Red Queen tells her: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast."

Is running faster about greater efficiency? Higher output? Is it about lowering costs? It's all of these, and it's also more.

Over the past decade, our University has been running fast. We have been moving from a governance system modeled after the public sector to one with an entrepreneurial can-do spirit, pitching against the world's best. Building upon our strong foundation for teaching excellence, we have moved to also striving for peaks of research excellence in the global arena. We are no longer just a commuter campus with a few hostels. We are creating a residential campus experience, including residential colleges, to grow a vibrant community of scholars who live and learn together.

NUS' transformation over the past decade has been achieved because people like you made the effort – and for some, change was painful. I recognize this pain. Globalization of higher education is beyond our control.Today, our students and faculty are free to choose from a wide range of options here and abroad.

In April, our University was corporatized. We came of age. As a collective body – a people, a community – we have taken ownership of our University. We take responsibility for shaping this university's future. We now enjoy a very high degree of autonomy.We can now run twice as fast.

In a competitive, fast changing world, we must run. We must run just to survive. We must run twice as fast in order to have a shot at global excellence.

Aspiration for global excellence must be linked to purpose. Running faster must be about running somewhere – somewhere worth running towards. That somewhere must be a meaningful and hopefully, exciting place.

Do not forget our University's history. We served by educating the first son or daughter of a family to go to university.We provided opportunities to those not blessed with wealth or status. We were purposeful, motivated to help build a young nation.

Now that Singapore has come of age, have things changed? How do we see our transformation?

Let me quote Paul Keating: "Nothing is more important to a country than the way it thinks about itself." In our context: How do our people see our University and see ourselves?

Do we see ourselves doing more and doing better in what we have done well in the past – training competent manpower and professionals to keep the economy going? If we do so, we could be living off the past, and run the risk of losing the future.

If, however, we see our University as a place of promise where people can dream, pursue their passions, and realize their potential, then what we dare to believe in will transform us. We – students, staff, faculty – will be masters of our future.So, colleagues, there are no limits to what we can do as an institution, except those we place on ourselves.

Discover Talents, Explore Beyond

Let me now talk about our students, and the part you and I can play in ensuring that their time with us is transformative.

As a national university, we admit a broad spectrum of students who come here with their different interests and abilities. We admit students with potential, students who can benefit from an NUS education. In turn, our students contribute to the campus community and campus life through their diverse backgrounds and experiences.

We must see our students as unique individuals, each with their own passions and aspirations. They need opportunities to discover their talents. They need space to explore beyond their immediate interests. They need challenges to stretch them and develop their potential to their fullest.

What are those opportunities, spaces and challenges?

I am sure we have seen the many pathways on our campus. When a natural track is carved out by people taking routes that make sense to them, our Office of Estate and Development takes note. A pathway is created. NUS must create multiple pathways for our students to carve out their own tracks based on their curiosity, interests, and abilities.

To create opportunities, space and challenges, we need to customize our programs. To this end, we are developing more joint and double degree programs with overseas partners. We are also developing double degree programs across our Faculties and double major programs within and across our Faculties. For the highly motivated and capable, we will enable them to run with independent study programs, to personalize their portfolio of modules.

Our students should have ample space to explore and flexibility to pursue their passions and realize their full potential. How they take advantage of opportunities offered by the University and how they progress are more important than their academic score card at entry. Those who show aptitude after enrolling at NUS will have the option to move into more challenging programs, including customized ones. This, in essence, is education that transforms.

I would like to tell a story to remind us that the young like to be stretched and challenged, and they can find their own paths. It also helps if the process is fun, and they can feel proud.

Our Faculty of Engineering is the only place in Singapore for learning how to build race cars. To design and build a race car for the annual Formula Society of Automotive Engineers Competition in Michigan, our students sacrifice evenings and weekends. Their Faculty Advisor, Associate Professor Seah Kar Heng, has been right there with them. Now on his seventh lap, Kar Heng is well-known for his dedication in training and mentoring the teams over the years.

Despite all the pressures, the students all agree that the 'out-of-classroom learning experience' has changed their lives. For this year's competition, the 12-student team designed and built the Centennial II. It emerged best from Asia.In overall design, it was placed 9th worldwide.

But the most important thing is: they enjoyed it! This is the joy of education we are talking about.

And they will not be the only ones to enjoy an NUS education. I want to assure you that NUS is committed to ensuring no student we admit will be denied our quality education because of financial difficulties. In the post-corporatization era, we shall be able to offer significantly more bursaries and other forms of financial aid. To attract and support talented students, we will also be putting substantially more income from Endowment and alumni gifts into merit-based scholarships. For this significant increase in financial aid and scholarships, we have our generous benefactors and alumni to thank.

More programs, more financial aid, more scholarships will not be enough. As we encourage our students to reach beyond and take responsibility for their learning, they will need counseling, mentoring and support from faculty. Let us each do our part.

The Power of an Idea Whose Time Has Come

Victor Hugo once said: "Never underestimate the power of an idea whose time has come".

Today is an opportune time to follow up on an idea whose time has come.

In our Centennial year, Dr Tony Tan, our eminent alumnus and former Deputy Prime Minister, called for NUS to move up in the global rankings and to be counted among the world's top 10 universities. No university in Asia has done this yet.

Today, I am asking our people to set our sights on a target of Global-10-10: 10 disciplines standing among the global top 10 within 10 years. I believe we have the courage, imagination and sense of mission to accomplish this.

Corporatization has freed us to become less top-down, more bottom-up. To achieve Global-10-10, it is imperative that you – our faculty – rise to this challenge. On our University's part, we will commit substantial resources to support your aspirations and efforts to stand among the world's top 10. Naturally, people are at the heart of this endeavor. Resources will be made available to nurture and retain, as well as recruit faculty who can create impact and raise our international standing.

Let me provide some specifics:

• Since last year, we have provided an additional budget allocation of $30 million for strategic initiatives. Faculties and administrative units are invited to submit proposals which will help them to grow and to excel in areas of research, education and enterprise which are strategic to the University.
• We have increased resources to support promising research. Besides funding for strategic research initiatives, more funds will be made available to support research in other areas, including the humanities and social sciences.
• We have increased the number of research scholarships for promising graduate students, training them in a challenging, multi-disciplinary environment.
• We are hiring senior academics who are world-leading researchers in strategic areas, to work with and to augment our faculty members who are doing high impact work.
• We will provide start-up funds for promising new faculty, to enable them to grow into the leaders of tomorrow. At the same time, we will increase support for current faculty to build up areas of strengths.

Let me encourage you and your colleagues to think through, and strategize on what it takes to stand among the top 10 in 10 years. I look forward to hearing your ideas and receiving proposals from you.

Reaching Beyond Ourselves

Peter Block, a leading author on leadership, writes about his often being asked the question 'how?' by people confronted with a new future. "How much money do we have?" "How do we figure this out?" "How do we change him or her or that?"

As an engineer, I know the importance of figuring out the 'how': How much is the budget? How much time do I have? How do I find the resources? Et cetera. Et cetera.

Peter Block's answer to 'how' is a deceptively simple one. The answer to how is yes. We must first say "yes" – yes to the vision, yes to the values, yes to the priorities – and then figure out how to get there.Often times, the answers only show up after we have made a fundamental commitment by saying "yes".

I invite us to say "yes", and together we will work on the "how".

I started off by talking about how a great university transforms people. Daniel Aw came to us, matriculating in the Chemistry Department. After one year, he switched to music. In three years, he became the first to graduate from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music – and with a first class honors. He's now off to Bern, Switzerland to pursue graduate studies. I would now like to share with you some of Daniel's music-making.

Daniel's life has been transformed because of the opportunity to choose.The transformation doesn't just stop with him. Each time he plays his bassoon, we are touched by the music.

We are running twice as hard, and we run for many reasons. For me, it's towards this kind of transformation – where people reach beyond themselves, to explore, discover and contribute.

Let me now close.

NUS is honored to host the Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize. This exhibition on the theme of "Cultures of Creativity" will commence next week. The accomplishments of Nobel Laureates and reasons for their success have been on my mind. Was it talent and creativity alone? What about the environment? The Nobel Exhibition explores the close connection between creative talents and the environment in which they live and work. What promotes the interplay between creativity and environment?Speaking of the environment, one often thinks first of infrastructure and operating system.Yet, for creativity to flourish, the socio-cultural dimension of the environment is also critical.

Colleagues, you and I make up this socio-cultural dimension. This softer and less tangible aspect of the environment is integral to the "Cultures of Creativity" that will be highlighted in the Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize next week.Let us all work together to foster a culture of creativity, with a supportive and responsive environment, where faculty and students can thrive. Together, we can make this happen.

A good university teaches. A great university transforms – transforming people into creative talents.

Thank you.