Don’s Blog – Making our mark on Malaysia and Singapore

Simon Peatfield (Director of Communications and Marketing) has asked me if I could write more regular blogs, and not just when I am travelling. I dutifully promised to do so, and have failed miserably. Here I am again stuck in an airport (Hong Kong) waiting for a delayed flight to Nanjing. The simple truth is that when I am travelling I have more unscheduled time to think and reflect, and to write.

I am currently travelling with Jo Doyle (Director of Student Recruitment and International Relations), William Powrie (Dean of Engineering and the Environment), and Peter Smith (ORC). We have spent the past three days in Singapore and Malaysia. It has been a very productive couple of days. On Thursday a large group of staff from the University were in Malaysia for the formal opening of the University of Southampton Malaysia Campus (USMC). It was a great occasion, exceptionally well organised by colleagues in Southampton working in partnership with our staff based at USMC. We invited two distinguished graduates to join us for the event, Adrian Newey, Chief Technical Officer for Red Bull Racing F1, and Rob White, Deputy Managing Director for Renault Sport F1. It was no coincidence that this is the week of the Malaysian Grand Prix, and no surprise that there was a great deal more media interest in our launch than one might typically get for the opening of a branch campus!

Adrian unveiled a plaque to commemorate the occasion together with the British High Commissioner to Malaysia, Simon Featherstone. It was a great occasion, enjoyed by all present, and especially by our first cohort of Engineering students in Malaysia who were thrilled with the opportunity to meet two such distinguished engineering alumni. Both were disarmingly self-effacing given the intensely competitive world they occupy, and happy to chat to the students and pose for photographs. The students put on an impressive display of their prowess in their first few months of study, flying remote-controlled helicopters that they had built from scratch with stunning precision for the guests (and assembled press). The event had a seriously positive atmosphere reflecting, in part the pioneering attitude of our students and staff in this brave new world for the University.

The development of the campus, recruitment of students and commencement of teaching has not been without a little frustration and drama over the past two years. It is to the great credit of John McBride and his team at USMC that we have great students studying a well organised programme in a fully functioning mini-campus in Malaysia. I reflected on the fact that we have learned a great deal about the practicalities of setting up a campus in another country through this experience, but still have a lot to learn if we are to become a university with a global standing and presence. For an institution filled to the brim with innovation and invention we can sometimes be very conservative in our thinking about the future shape of higher education, and about the ways in which we will need to adapt to survive and even to thrive in a rapidly changing and increasing competitive environment. USMC is an important symbol of our future, and of our ambition to be a globally competitive university.  Its success will be important. We have made a good start, but need to ensure that John and his colleagues have the necessary freedom and flexibility to develop in a working environment that is completely different to the UK.

Friday saw the various staff fan out across Singapore. Colleagues from Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science and ORC achieved near blanket coverage of the university and research eco-system in Singapore as we continue to raise our profile and achieve ever more productive collaboration in research and education, especially with the two major universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technical University (NTU).

For my part, I spent the morning at Singapore’s Agency for Science and Technology Research (A*STAR) discussing the potential to undertake a joint programme of research with the simple goal of ‘solving big problems of significance to the Singapore economy through research’. Ajit Shenoi, the Director of SMMI has done a fantastic job of building partnerships in Singapore and I am very optimistic that this will lead to further productive collaboration across a spectrum of science and technology.

In the afternoon, I visited the Singapore Institute of Management and was able to sign off a deal that will see our Management School initially offering undergraduate and Masters programmes in Digital Marketing from April 2014. There is great scope to extend to the range of programmes offered through this partnership in the future. These two agreements, alongside a dual centre research agreement in photonics with NTU that was finalised last year, mean that we have a presence in this region that is as strong and broadly based as any university of our type.

The week finished with a well-attended alumni reception in the evening. It is always impressive, and often humbling to meet our graduates and to find out what they have achieved in their lives. This evening was no exception. We had graduates from 2011 alongside those who had graduated in the 1970’s – all had stories to tell, and all were highly positive about their university and the impact that it had on their lives. All were enthusiastic to support our growing engagement in the region, committed to supporting the next generation of students who will be located in Singapore and Malaysia.

On now to China where I face the terrifying prospect of giving a public health lecture alongside some of China’s best known public health academics at Nanjing University. I am seriously out of practice, and not confident that I am as up to date as I would want to be, but I have been working on my talk all weekend.