Yale-NUS Kingfisher Awards: Celebrating the contributions to our community

The annual Yale-NUS Kingfisher Awards returned on 15 April 2023 to celebrate contributions by students, student organisations and staff in the past academic year. The ceremony, which saw 44 nominations across 11 categories, took place at the Performance Hall followed by a candlelight ceremony. Yale-NUS students also attended their first prom which was themed “A Night Under the Stars”, which took place after the ceremony.

As a student group that focuses on increasing off-campus volunteering opportunities for the Yale-NUS community, the Community Impact (ComPact) group received the Outstanding Student Organisation award for their innovative and diverse programmes.

ComPact partnered with different organisations around Singapore across the last academic year and held events such as an insect identification workshop for children, which aimed at educating and raising awareness on the importance of biodiversity conservation.

President of ComPact, Karthikasan Natarajan (Class of 2025), reflected at the end of the workshop, “The children were able to identify various insects and learn about the importance of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem health. The workshop also sparked the children’s curiosity and interest in the natural world, which was a wonderful outcome.” The programme was well-received and participants have requested for ComPact to conduct more workshops in future.

Besides student organisations, student leaders were recognised for their impact in the Yale-NUS community as well. Winner of the Student Organisation Leader of the Year award, Audrey Jeong (Class of 2024), juggled many hats, including the Society of Yale-NUS Dancers (sYNCd) Ballet head, swimming team co-captain, women’s football captain, President of Ashen Light, and Elm Residential College Advisor (RCA). RCAs are students who provide support and assistance to fellow students in the Residential Colleges. As part of the College’s residential living experience, RCAs also help foster community spirit by creating spaces and events for their fellow students.

While Audrey led sports and dance teams in different periods, she balanced all of these by keeping track of important dates, which helped her prioritise certain activities over others. For instance, during sports seasons, she placed extra energy and effort into leading and training with the swimming and football teams.

On leadership, Audrey believes that a good leader understands the energy and wants of those in an organisation. She shared: “At the end of the day, everyone, including myself, is here to have a good time and have fun.” Audrey consistently kept this in mind when organising different activities and motivating others during training sessions. Furthermore, she believes that leaders should not try to do everything on their own so she works closely with others in the organisation when building up projects and events.

Residential life is an integral part of the Yale-NUS experience. In recognition of his efforts in influencing residential life where he executed multiple events for the community such as Diversity Week and Eat Play Love, Martin Choo (Class of 2023) won the Residential Life Service award.

Last semester, Martin, along with the other RCAs, organised Eat Play Love, a campus-wide carnival which saw attendees enjoying different games, activities and food. He shared that it was great seeing others on campus taking the afternoon to relax after a busy semester and “the fact that all three residential colleges came together to pull this off just made it feel like the whole of Yale-NUS was together.”

Martin feels that planning these events was not possible by himself and hopes that “the spaces [they] have created through these events have given everyone opportunities to connect with and learn from each other.”

The full list of award categories and winners is as follows:

Congratulations to all winners!