12 January 2024

Dear Yale-NUS community and friends,

I hope time during the holiday season has been well-spent resting and catching up with loved ones.

I am pleased to announce that we will be establishing a dedicated Yale-NUS Office within NUS College to support some of our Kingfishers who need additional semesters to complete their graduation requirements, after the College closes in June 2025. Assistant Dean and Lecturer of Humanities Dr Paul Gallagher will serve as the Director of this office, which will provide academic and administrative support to our remaining students as they navigate their final degree requirements. Dr Gallagher and the team planning for post-2025 matters will be communicating the necessary information over the course of the next three semesters to all affected students who are expected to complete their Yale-NUS degrees after the closure of the College. We are confident that, under his guidance, all remaining Kingfishers will be in good hands until they take flight from Yale-NUS College.

This week, we are honoured to host distinguished speakers from Singapore and across the world at our ‘Learning from Global Liberal Arts Education’ symposium to share the lessons, successes and challenges of a global liberal arts education. Organised around the themes of liberal arts education in a time of geopolitical risk, balancing the global with the regional, and undergraduate education, tradition and innovation, the symposium offers an inclusive discussion on globalised higher education in an increasingly unstable world.

In other good news, I am thrilled to announce that our Performance Hall will be permanently named ‘Yale-NUS College Hall’ this month. The hall has been an iconic space within our community of learning with many key events having taken place there such as our Common Curriculum lectures, talks, performances and events. With the official naming, this physical space will serve as a reminder to future generations of students and educators of the proud history of Yale-NUS College.

We are also very proud of our students and alumni as they go on to achieve great things. Congratulations to our Rhodes Scholar Max Han (Class of 2024) and Schwarzman Scholars Rachel Juay (Class of 2020), Lucy Zhu Xinyu (Class of 2022) and Htet Myet Min Tun (Class of 2024) as they pursue graduate studies at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom, and Tsinghua University, the People’s Republic of China, in 2024. We are so excited for them and wish them all the best for the next chapter that lies ahead.

Thank you for your continued support. I wish you a great year ahead.

Sincerely, 

Joanne Roberts