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| Professor Annie Koh, vice president for the Office of Business Development and External Relations, speaking to Xinhuanet. (Source: sg.xinhuanet.com) |
BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- The Singapore Management University (SMU) held its inaugural China Forum, themed “Be China Ready”, on 13 November, 2013.
During the Forum, Professor Annie Koh, Vice President for the Office of Business Development and External Relations, spoke to Xinhuanet on the unique characteristics of the various schools in SMU, its newly-launched programs, and its collaborations with universities in China.
Professor Koh said that SMU had started out with only its business school, enrolling about 700 students a year. Today, it is the largest school in SMU, while it has subsequently started its Accountancy and Law Schools, two highly professional academic fields, for which they have obtained accreditation by the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ICSA) and the Law Society of Singapore.
According to Professor Koh, the Accountancy and Law Schools receive the most applications from students, but have the smallest cohorts among the various schools, enrolling only about 200 students per year.
As the School of Economics places much emphasis on economic indicators, Professor Koh said that its demands on mathematics is very high, and thus only those among the many applicants who exhibit exceptional mathematical skills are enrolled into the school.
The School of Information Systems, according to Professor Koh, focuses on finance, banking, healthcare, and logistics information. On the topic of competition with other information systems schools, Professor Koh remarked that the Dean of the SMU School of Information Systems had once said that SMU does not compete in content, but in the direct application of information systems knowledge, which is the reason behind the Master of Applied Information Systems program being named as such.
Professor Koh added that SMU is currently working very closely with the Peking University School of Software and Microelectronics, whose software requires specialized fields of application.
In addition, the School of Social Sciences is also important to the University, as many of the collaborations between SMU and educational institutions in China were planned by the Dean of the School.
On the unique qualities of graduates from SMU, Professor Koh said that SMU students have learned to actively give back to society, through the requirement by the University for them to perform a minimum of 80 hours of community service.
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