Prof. Adrian Lee
Associate Professor,Department of Chemistry
National University of Singapore
Singapore
Adrian Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, and the former Deputy Director at the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning at the National University of Singapore for which his primary responsibility was overseeing professional development. Adrian’s background is in the sciences—he holds a PhD in Chemistry. He came to Singapore in 2002 on a Singapore Millennium Foundation Scholarship and subsequently joined NUS in 2005. His interests in education are wide-ranging and include technology-enhanced learning, especially blended learning, interdisciplinary education, and student living–learning experiences. Adrian looks to build programmes within a collegial culture and further a conversation that is both evidence-based and research-informed that becomes part of an academic’s scholarly reflective teaching practice.
Interdisciplinary Education in a Digital World
In the early stages of the pandemic, NUS President, Prof Tan Eng Chye, saw the pandemic as a clarion call for tertiary education to take an interdisciplinary approach. Writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Prof Tan argued that “the challenges of the future won’t respect disciplinary boundaries”. Since this call for change was sounded, NUS has responded by rolling out a suite of changes, both curricular and structural. These changes seek to tear down the disciplinary silos of a traditional university. The first significant change brought the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science together under the aegis of the College of Humanities and Sciences, other Colleges uniting similarly disparate Faculties and Schools has soon followed. Contemporary with these structural changes was the introduction of a common curriculum that emphasised interdisciplinary education. This major reorganisation took place alongside a separate, but equally important, drive towards blended learning and technology-enhanced learning in general. This second thread of major change recognised the profound change in our relationship with technology forced upon us by the pandemic. In this talk, I will discuss how NUS is negotiating these changes. I will describe the approach taken by NUS in developing an interdisciplinary education curriculum. I will also discuss how NUS is embracing technology to realise the goal of an interdisciplinary education.
I was a little unsure after the change in the title of the track, but this seemed to fit most closely with the objectives of the track. If you had imagined something different and this isn’t appropriate, please let me know.
