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25 May 2019

On learning that a farm in Vietnam was producing excess milk, a group of students from Singapore Polytechnic has come up with a way to stop it going to waste.

Students from SP’s chemical and life sciences school developed a recipe to convert cows’ milk into soap during a two-week trip to Cu Chi village near Ho Chi Minh City in 2017.

Every soap bar is handmade in a home studio in Vietnam using natural ingredients, like bamboo charcoal, rose clay powder and pure essential oils. Villagers earn extra income by selling about 15 litres of milk a week.

The Singapore team members focus on sales and marketing, while their Vietnamese counterparts handle the procurement of raw materials and production.

The trip was part of SP’s learning express programme. More than 5,000 students have gone on these trips since the programme started in 2013. More than 15 projects over the years have been implemented in local communities.

23 May 2019

Mr Nicholas Chan, 23, is the first Institute of Technical Education graduate to be accepted into the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

But his road to NUS was far from smooth. He had previously quit secondary school, trained as a nursing student in the Institute of Technical Education, and then at Nanyang Polytechnic.

In his youth, he had always entertained thoughts of being a nurse or a doctor so he could help people, partly because of his grandmother who had taken care of him when.

He did well in ITE with a grade point average of 3.65, qualifying for NYP’s nursing course. He graduated from NYP last year in May with a near-perfect GPA of 3.91 out of 4.

He was admitted to NUS through its Exceptional Individual Scheme. The scheme lets the university use its discretion and look beyond just academic results in admitting a small number of students.

18 May 2019

When 19-year-old Singapore students were recently asked about streaming in the ST-SUSS survey, as many as sixty percent felt it was appropriate for students to be routed into different streams at the Secondary School level.

Those from the junior colleges and Integrated Programme schools favoured streaming more strongly than those from the polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education.

However, eighty percent of the respondents voiced concerns over examination stress, even as a large majority of them felt that national exams must remain.

It was also found that parents were more stressed out over exams and streaming, while students themselves saw examinations as an appropriate way to classify students.

National Institute of Education Associate Professor Jason Tan was not surprised at the findings. “Their views on streaming, exams, and reasons for wanting a degree, all show that they are a very pragmatic lot. I am not surprised that they support streaming and exams – they probably see exams as a fair, objective way to sort students,” he said.

15 May 2019

Mr Tan Wee Kiat is a student at Singapore Polytechnic. He just graduated as the top scorer in his Diploma in Visual Communication and Media Design course. He had a grade point average of 3.87 for the three-year course.

Mr Tan had a rough childhood, and a less-than-stellar academic record. “Moving to secondary school, I kind of gave up because I didn’t see a way out,” he said.

However, a turning point came in Secondary 3, when he was mentored by his mathematics teacher, Mr Lee Yew Meng. He soon realised that if he put in the effort, he could excel in his studies.

One thing remained constant in Mr Tan Wee Kiat’s life — his passion for drawing.

To hone his design skills, Mr Tan did an internship as a graphic designer at an award-winning boutique design agency.

Mr Tan aims to get a scholarship to study at the London College of Communication after completing his national service.

13 May 2019

A team of four final-year university students from the Singapore Institute of Technology have invented a pedal-powered scooter that is completely mechanical with a speed limit of 24km per hour.

The scooter, named ScootMe!, moves when riders pedal on it. The team won a consolation prize at the recently-held Mapletree Challenge for their project.

The scooter is purported to be a solution at preventing e-scooter-related accidents and fires. Another reason the team built the scooter was to get Singaporeans to exercise more.

Hoping to mass-produce ScootMe! one day, the team will improve the design to make it sleek and lighter. They will also attach a rubber foot pedal for grip and fix minor mechanical glitches so that the scooter can move along sharp bends without toppling.

11 May 2019

Some Singapore schools as well as homes have, in recent years, introduced mindfulness practices to help students refocus their thoughts.

Mindfulness is a state of being aware of one’s thoughts, which when coupled with meditation, has been known to reduce stress.

For instance, for one and a half hours each day, 10 girls from the Singapore Girls’ Home step out of their daily routine to practice mindfulness, as part of a curriculum organised by the EtonHouse Community Fund, an independent charity of the EtonHouse Education Group.

Sally (not her real name), 18, said the sessions helped her learn to keep calm and patient. She hopes to manage stress and challenges better when she joins the workforce.

The Girls’ Home takes in girls between 12 and 19 years old, and the average length of stay is two years.

10 May 2019

Professor Lily Kong took over as Singapore Management University’s fifth president in January this year..

She had previously served SMU as provost and she had also been the Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Social Sciences.

Professor Lily Kong is a graduate of the National University of Singapore and University College London. She had been a faculty member of the NUS Department of Geography, and she also served as vice-provost and vice-president at NUS.

Professor Lily Kong has received five international fellowship awards, including the Commonwealth Fellowship Award and the Fulbright Fellowship Award. She has also won the Robert Stoddard Award for Distinguished Service (Geography of Religion and Belief Systems), given out by the Association of American Geographers.

Prof Kong was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2006.