Shuttle buses operated all across the large campus at NUS. Photo by Kang Na-min.
In cafeteria, sections for plates are divided into halal and non-halal. Photo by Kang Na-min.
Thanks to industrial developments, interaction and communication between countries have become more accessible than ever. As the world gets more and more internationally connected, developing students as individuals suited for a globalized world became an inevitable task. Leading the flow, National University of Singapore (NUS) has been showing pioneering movement in developing global environments with premier education of world-influence. To further research on how NUS has grown into a world-class university with a highly globalized environment, reporters from Ewha Media Center comprised of Ewha Weekly, Ewha Voice and Ewha University Broadcasting System visited Singapore. In this edition, Ewha Voice will report the overall analysis of the transformative education system of NUS.

Global-village in NUS
* Why is ‘Global’ essential?
Situated at the center of Asia, Singapore has been called a “melting pot,” representing its multi-cultural society. Therefore, lectures held in English, students separating the plates into halal and non-halal are very natural. Fronting this multi-culturalist mix as a great asset, NUS has grown into a leading university of world-influence.
 “We don’t have abundance of natural resources, only human capitals,” said professor Ashraf Kassim, the Vice dean of Office of Undergraduate Programs at NUS. “So, we try to develop our human capital to have the highest potential. To survive and thrive, nowadays, we need to be globally linked and relevant. That’s why we make sure that our students are globally competitive.”
What NUS emphasizes is being relevant for today: not just in terms of academic reading, but also in developing the ability to grasp and respond to the idea of global issues. Collaboration with world-class universities and industries is another way NUS provides students with high quality education. For instance, instead of learning premium technologies in foreign countries, students can receive global education through professionals and on-campus facilities like research hubs.
Along with world-class education with up-to-date theories and technologies, cultivating students’ skills for finest levels of articulation and presentation is another one of NUS’s conspicuous characteristics of its curriculum.
“Students need to be able to communicate their ideas with others,” professor Ashraf remarked. “Nowadays, people don’t work individually. They are going to meet different kinds of people from  the world.”
To inculcate students with a sense of interaction, NUS provides lectures with diverse ways throughout the courses such as  smaller-sized studies or presentation-based classes. 
“In case of Business school, we have a class called Business Communication,” said Shin Dong-hee (NUS, 1), a full-time Korean international student. “Starting from sentence structure, we get to learn how to speak when you meet certain types of people.”

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