4 November 2022

Dear Yale-NUS community and friends,

We are coming to the end of the semester and what a great semester it has been!

Over the last three months, we have organised seven public talks, over 20 internal talks and also staged a play for members of the public and our community. Our students, faculty and staff have continued to drive excellence through their active involvement in various on-campus and off-campus projects – from publishing research, going on experiential learning trips and winning awards to taking part in sporting activities and supporting the less fortunate. Thankfully, with the relaxed safety measures, we are now able to engage more with one another through in-person activities and meals. 

I treasure these moments of togetherness. In a small and tightly knit community like ours, relationships are what make us special, and give us strength. In my messages, I talk frequently about our core values as I believe they play an important role in guiding how we behave and function as a community. Earlier this semester, we started a nomination process to recognise members of our community who uphold the Yale-NUS core values, namely, Transformation, Exploration, Respect, Inclusivity and Care. I am pleased to announce that the inaugural winners of the Core Values Champion Awards have been selected. Their commitment to these values will serve as an inspiration for the rest of us to do better too. My heartiest congratulations to our Core Values Champions!

• Individual: Shirley Thia, Student Affairs Office
• Team: Research and Grant Administration Office (RGAO) – Meenakshi Annamalai, Rachael Tan, Kden Tan
• Team: Infrastructure, Safety, and Security team – Sansurash S/O Krishnan Samy, Edmund Tan, Ernest Liu and Jayson Berbasa  

Other exciting projects taking shape are our legacy projects. In September, we launched a survey to invite our community to share your thoughts on what you would like to see in the new digital legacy platform. We received a variety of suggestions to cover subjects ranging from the student experience to the built environment and history of the College. Your thoughts and opinions mean so much to us and we are grateful for the opportunity to co-create the platform with you. This digital legacy project will be archived and maintained at Yale after 2025, so we can all continue to have access to it in the future.

Later this month, our students will be having their examinations and I wish them my very best. I also wish everyone a restful and invigorating term break in December as we look forward to new hopes and opportunities in the new year. For a start, I am pleased to share that we will be welcoming Marvin Chun, Woo-Kyoung Ahn, Jonathan Wyrtzen and Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen from Yale University to the College as visiting professors next January. They are distinguished academics in the fields of psychology, sociology & history, and geography, and they will be teaching courses at Yale-NUS. We will continue to tap on our partnerships with Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) to bring more visiting faculty from both institutions to teach at our College, enriching our module offerings as we provide a rewarding Yale-NUS experience for our students.

As I end this message, I would like to thank everyone for journeying with me. What touched my heart the most over the past year, is the sense of community that we have here at Yale-NUS. As we navigate the waves of change together, I firmly believe that this bond will carry us through as we make the most of our time together.

Thank you.

Sincerely, 

Joanne Roberts