Engaged City University

From the closure of workplace premises during the Circuit Breaker and adoption of work-from-home and split teams arrangements in 2020, to 75 per cent of employees returning to the workplace in April 2021, before reverting to working from home as a default arrangement just over a month later, it’s been a rollercoaster ride for organisations and employees during the pandemic.

University campuses — with their sprawling lawns that serve as a heartbeat of a vibrant student body; award-winning architectural monoliths; and cosy seminar rooms that encourage lively debate — are traditionally thought of as physical epicentres for inspiring discovery and thought. Covid-19, however, has transformed higher education the world over, triggering a need to pivot existing institutions, and for educators to delve deep into newer, and sometimes better ways of delivering learning outcomes.

Last year, a group of SMU students and alumni started a ground-up initiative, the COVID-19 Taskforce for Non-Profits (now known as Thrive Social Consulting), to help future-proof non-profit organisations (NPOs) in Singapore.

The effects of COVID-19 have rippled through the social fabric of communities the world over. Businesses and investments, in particular, have been shaken by the economic uncertainty that arose from the pandemic, with several industries transformed by the exceptional events of the past year.

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.

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.