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UUM ONLINE: "UUM has progressed so much!" said Deputy Higher Education Minister Dato' Dr. Mansor Othman after listening to a briefing and presentation on the various initiatives and achievements attained by UUM during his working visit here recently.

He said UUM had successfully moved up its ranking since the days of its inception at Tanah Merah, Jitra up until the Sintok valley.

"Congratulations on the University's commitment to place UUM at a better position, in fact everyone is doing their best, even more so now that the country is confronting the COVID-19 outbreak. This pandemic has taught us a great many experience.

"Focus on entrepreneurship, I am amazed that UUM has a centre dedicated to entrepreneurship, and it has also provided a microcredit scheme to help students start their business on campus," he said in a meeting held at the Senate Meeting Room during his Working Visit to UUM.

Dato' Dr. Mansor said UUM had made so much progress in terms of ranking, in fact he also expressed his interest in the social entrepreneurship aspect as highlighted by UUM through its, Co-operative and Entrepreneurship Development Institute (CEDI) where entrepreneurs used entrepreneurship principles to build and manage their business to achieve their social goals, which in turn resulted in the setting up of the Start-up Business Unit aimed at nurturing and generating entrepreneurs among the staff and students of this University.

He said he had long wanted to expand the concept of microcredit to Higher Education Institutions throughout the country and he expressed elation upon learning that UUM had long practiced the scheme.

He said with all these efforts, hopefully it would attract the industry to work together with the university to contribute to the community and help produce more entrepreneurs from amongst the students.

Meanwhile, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Dato' Dr. Ahmad Bashawir Abdul Ghani said UUM had always taken proactive steps and redefined efforts to strengthen teaching and learning (TnL) methods and practices to ensure that it remained relevant, thus meeting current industry needs.

According to him, in an effort to realize the idea of Higher Education 4.0, UUM was extremely alert and prepared to go through the transformation phase especially in confronting the Industrial Revolution 4.0 which also left a huge impact on the needs of the educational system.

He said that as the country dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic, UUM had also proven that it was able to digitize all the workloads and services of its clients including the implementation of remote learning to continue TnL sessions.

"All of these initiatives will fulfil the aspirations of the Malaysian government, particularly, MOHE in strengthening the elements of knowledge and industry that go in tandem with the requirements of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0)," said he who also gave a briefing on the University in conjunction with the Deputy Minister of Higher Education Malaysia working visit to UUM.

In the briefing, he spoke about the history of UUM, the development phase of the UUM Strategic Plan, the recent achievements of UUM, particularly its rise in the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the initiatives undertaken by UUM during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also informed that UUM welcomed the idea put forth by His Royal Highness Al-Aminul Karim Sultan Sallehuddin Ibni Almarhum Sultan Badlishah, the Sultan of Kedah to establish the Centre for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

The Vice-Chancellor said each year UUM would go on to show its progress and in fact may even outdo Research Universities (RU) in the future, hence, making the University on par with other RUs even though UUM's forte is management.

Attendees who presented at the meeting were the Director of the Cooperative and Entrepreneurship Development Institute (CEDI), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chandrakantan Subramaniam - entrepreneurship at UUM and Deputy Director of the Centre for University-Industry Collaboration (CUIC), Dr. Shahrina Othman -the current status of students on practicum during the Movement Control Order (MCO).