I had the pleasure of hosting 2 students from USM in Malaysia for the past couple of days. They were here to promote their advertising/design competition, and since I had free days from school the time they were in Singapore, I helped them a little in their promotion of their competition and showed them around NUS and Singapore.

Towards the end of their trip, they remarked that I promote NUS alot. Thinking about their remarks, I thought that it was rather true. I did ask them on a couple of occassions to come to NUS for graduate studies in my department (they are final-year students), and I provided many reasons why it’s good for them to come (reputable degree, many scholarships available, many international faculty etc).

It appeared odd to me that I, as someone who is always of the opinion that NUS is not very student-oriented, could actually promote NUS to another student. Am I suffering from schizophrenia? The description of some of the symptoms of schizophrenia by NIMH in America are unusual thoughts or perceptions, including hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, and disorders of movement.

I doubt I’m suffering from schizophrenia though. What I think is happening is that while I have a certain perception of how NUS treats its students in general and I don’t like that, I’m very happy with my department. I think my lecturers are great, and the way the programme is structured is great, and the students in the programme are great too. I’m more than happy to promote my programme to anyone who’s willing to listen, even though I may dislike NUS in general.

With NUS alumni support being weak, my experience might hold the key to creation of strong alumni. NUS faculty at the departmental level are instrumental in making students feel a sense of belonging to NUS. Well, not directly, since the department is acting as a proxy but it doesn’t matter. What’s important that some part of NUS got to benefit from strong alumni support.

Perhaps its time to change strategy in courting alumni support. Instead of asking the alumni to donate money/support to NUS, find out their field of study and appeal for them to support their department. It might work better. I’m likely to throw away a letter from the alumni office asking me to support NUS, but I’m definitely not going to throw away a letter of appeal for donation signed by my department head.

Did I just write down the formula on how to exploit me? :p