Associate Professor Dr Jimmy Mok, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic, Student and Alumni Affairs presenting a token of appreciation to Professor Vicki Chen

Professor Aleksandar D. Rakic from UQ receiving his token of appreciation.

A photo of UQ representatives together with Willie Tan Moh Leong, Global Engagement Office senior vice-president and Dr Jimmy Mok.

A group photo with all the representatives from UQ and UCSI.

The partnership between University of Queensland and UCSI University over the years has opened up favourable opportunities for UCSI students to explore a new learning environment through the Star Trek programme.  

This year, with two more students from the Faculty of Engineering, Technology, and Built Environment going to experience a one-month attachment at University of Queensland (UQ), both universities hope that this partnership will continue to benefit the students and hope to cooperate in other partnership programmes in the future.

According to University of Queensland (UQ) associate dean of external engagement, Professor Aleksandar D. Rakic, the partnership has incredibly brought these two universities closer to their mission in bringing high quality education for the students and to benefit both universities in the long run.

“When we decided to engage with UCSI, we saw a university which was on a very steep upward trend.  We saw a university which became bigger and better every year; open for business, discussion, keen to share ideas, embrace new pathways and that is what exactly we were looking for. We know that we don’t have the capacity to work with everyone and we try to find partners that share the same ideas,” he said.

“We believe that both universities will grow and every year we will establish another level of partnership. So we started with student mobility, articulation and scholarship as an important part of that and we see this partnership to be much more,” said Prof Aleksandar.

University of Queensland’s Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology executive dean Professor Vicki Chen, expressed how important it is for both universities to play their roles as partners to make sure the students will attain the best experience during their attachment and to grow together with other plans.  

“We are looking at a quality partnership where we can develop the relationship on multiple levels and it’s important because I think UQ is looking to present itself as a global university and to make sure that our students get exposed to internationalisation. Also, one of our missions is to provide leaders of the world and to identify which partner has potential students. So with a high quality partnership, producing outstanding leaders and being representatives are the main objectives of this particular partnership,” she said.

She expressed the potential to bring more students to experience and gain benefit from the Star Trek programme including postgraduate students from UCSI.

“We are trying to deepen the partnership to a different level; we see growth, not just for undergraduates but also for postgraduates that also allows us now to open up opportunities for other deeper collaboration in terms of research and other partnerships. We are also looking to give flavour to our students in having other great students from different institutions to come to our university and give them a global perspective,” she added.

UCSI’s Faculty of Engineering, Technology and Built Environment dean, Assistant Professor Dr Ang Chun Kit also expressed his excitement as the students will get the opportunity to go for their attachment at University of Queensland.

“It’s good to have a collaboration with UQ, as we know UQ is in the top 50 university list. They are still willing to work with us and I think this is a good thing. Our students have the opportunity to expose themselves to this top university and this is the chance for local students to go here as well,” he said.

“This year we have two students who are going for the attachment in UQ in September for one month. It’s a research attachment and they mostly will be working as an assistant for a professor in on-going research projects. They will work with data collection, data analysis under the professor’s supervision and they will work together on research related to their disciplines,” he remarked.

Khoo Hon Sern, a Mechatronic Engineering student will be mentored by Professor Dr David Mee for his project entitled, “Analysis of Acoustic Performance of Teaching Space at The University of Queensland” and Hoon Jian Wen, an Electrical and Electronic Engineering student will be supervised by Professor Tapan Sapa and Dr Fei Fei Bai for his project entitled, “Battery Energy Storage Control System Design for large-scale Solar PV plant integration”.

The executive visit of University of Queensland’s Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology to UCSI University on 23 September, 2019 gave the opportunity to Professor Vicki Chen, Professor Aleksandar D Rakic and two other UQ representatives to discuss further about the partnership with UCSI representatives.

They were presented with a token of appreciation by Associate Professor Dr Jimmy Mok, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic, Student and Alumni Affairs at the end of the meeting.