Research Projects by SMU School of Social Sciences undergraduates clinch five awards SMU School of Social Sciences (SOSS) students were honoured with five titles at the Student Research Awards (SRA) 2020, which was held online during the pandemic. The awards were clinched by three undergraduates — Nadyanna Binte Mohamed Majeed; Ng Hok Shan, Matthew; and Verity Lua Yu Qing — who submitted their research in the field of Psychology.

SMU Vision 2025 was first unveiled in 2014 and now enters its second phase. In her second annual State of the University Address on 4 September 2020, SMU President Professor Lily Kong reiterated the vision for SMU — becoming a world-renowned global city university, tackling the world’s complexities, and impacting humanity positively.

SMU has set digital transformation, sustainable living, and growth in Asia as the three priority areas for the university’s next phase of growth. These priorities will guide the development of SMU’s strategies for realising SMU Vision 2025. Among these strategies are: a continued focus on transformative education and cutting-edge research.

The climate crisis grows more urgent by the second. By some expert accounts, we only have about a decade to halt the irreversible damage caused by climate change.

As some school and university campuses worldwide begin to re-open, now-familiar precautionary measures such as temperature-taking, hand-sanitising and social distancing have made their way into classrooms and lecture halls. There is also a range of technologies being deployed or proposed to help manage the COVID-19 threat in institutions of learning.  

The health of a society can only be as robust as the health of its most vulnerable members — this has become clearer than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the heightened susceptibility of marginalised groups to the coronavirus has life-or-death implications for the global community.

The growth of the gig economy is one of the many changes that have arisen due to the pervasive reach of new technologies over the past decade. Jobs such as the Grab driver and Foodpanda delivery person arose due to the launch of new digital platforms.

Mobility and diversity are crucial to higher education, and a new statement signed by 33 university leaders from over 20 countries commits to upholding these values at a time when they are under duress. It is crucial to “continue to enable the cross-border flows of students, and the cross-cultural interactions that can only make the world a better place”, said Professor Lily Kong, President of SMU and one of the signatories of the statement.

  Ideas from a new book co-authored by Prof Arnoud De Meyer

As the world tries to comprehend and survive the impact of COVID-19, this crisis of a generation has also yielded some thought-provoking moments that approach positivity, at least when it comes to the environment. As cities across the globe went into lockdown mode, citizens marvelled at the way industrial smog gave way to clear blue skies, and how wildlife returned to serene waterways emptied of tourist-filled vessels.