Internationalisation

SMU has announced a new programme that offers business undergraduates a unique 18-month, immersive exchange experience that spans three continents. It is offered in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapell Hill (UNC) in the United States, as well as the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark.

Aligned with SMU’s “Growth in Asia” strategic priority and its continued commitment to provide high-quality education and contribute to regional development, the University inaugurated its latest Overseas Centre in bustling Bangkok, Thailand on 27 October 2023. The establishment of Overseas Centre Bangkok (OCB) marks the University’s second regional presence, with the first launched in Jakarta, Indonesia in December 2022., SMU plans to launch its third Overseas Centre in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam next year.

The Karim Family Foundation has made a generous contribution to SMU with the establishment of the Karim Family Foundation Scholarship. The new scholarship was announced at a Gift Ceremony held on 27 February 2023, at the SMU University Lounge. This scholarship was initiated by SMU alumni Cindy and Chayadi Karim, who graduated from SMU in 2014 and 2015 respectively. They are the children of Bachtiar Karim and Dewi Sukwanto, Principals of the Karim Family Foundation.

The importance of global exposure for future leaders has never been more pressing. The world is changing at a breakneck pace, and an overseas experience during tertiary education helps broaden our view of what's happening elsewhere in this wide-open universe we call home.

From online marketplace behemoths like Amazon, Taobao, Shopee and Lazada, to digitally native, direct-to-consumer brands, e-commerce is a thriving, rapidly burgeoning sector. The exponential growth of online retail has been further fuelled by the pandemic: According to findings from the IBM US Retail Index, Covid-19 has accelerated the move from physical stores to online platforms by about five years.

In July 2019, some 200 students, representing 30 nationalities and 70 universities convened in SMU’s city campus for the annual Global Summer Programme (GSP). Accepting its largest intake since its launch five years ago, GSP comprised 10 credit-bearing courses that drew upon the expertise of faculty from across SMU’s six schools.

Assistant Professor Yasmin Ortiga of the SMU School of Social Sciences was recently awarded the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship 2019 for her research on higher education in the Philippines.

SMU students, working with students from Brunei and Australia, were voted the Best Delegation at the 5th ASEAN Foundation Model ASEAN Meeting (AFMAM) in Bangkok In July this year, a team of six SMU undergraduates participated in the 5th ASEAN Foundation Model ASEAN Meeting (AFMAM) held in Bangkok, Thailand.

Undergraduates in Singapore and China spent the summer learning about each other’s homeland Youths with cross-cultural experiences are able to build better rapport with people from different backgrounds. That was part of the thinking behind the Sino-Singapore Undergraduate Exchange (SSUE), a cultural exchange programme initiated in 2002 by ESM Goh Chok Tong (then-Singapore’s Prime Minister) and Mr Hu Jintao (then-Vice President of the People’s Republic of China).

Professors Lim Ee-Peng and Zhu Feida from the School of Information Systems were recognised at the recent Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) Awards.