Nine new courses at NTU to give graduates an added edge

SINGAPORE — To cater to demand in certain industries and to increase graduates’ career opportunities, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) announced that it would kick off the new academic year in August with nine new undergraduate degree programmes in business, engineering and science.

Among them are two integrated programmes where business or accountancy students get to graduate with both an honours degree and a Masters degree in financial engineering, and they will get to spend seven weeks on study exchange at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States in their fourth year, receiving the American university’s certificate in computational finance after completing the courses there.

Professor Ravi Kumar, Dean of NTU’s Nanyang Business School, said the new courses would challenge students to solve real-life problems faced by companies and organisations daily, and their ability to perform under pressure would be “tested to the fullest”.

There will also be two other programmes where students may take a business or accountancy undergraduate degree course coupled with a minor in strategic communication, meant to enhance graduates’ versatility in areas such as public relations, marketing communication, and media planning.

For students keen on engineering or science courses, NTU will introduce five new engineering and science programmes with second majors in emerging industries, such as pharmaceutical engineering, food science technology, medical biology, and biomedical materials.

With these additions, the varsity will offer more than 100 undergraduate degree programmes in total in the new school year. NTU said that these allowed its students to be trained in a core discipline complemented by a related discipline, or to diversify their degree, by matching it with an offering in an unrelated area.

Professor Kam Chan Hin, Senior Associate Provost (Undergraduate Education), said: “The demands in the global workplace are increasingly going to require students to have both depth of knowledge and ability to go beyond their core discipline. The challenges at work will require specific niche skills, and solutions are often found at the interfaces of disciplines.”

In an example of interdisciplinary learning, students studying bioengineering or materials engineering will be able to take up a second major in pharmaceutical engineering. They will get to work in leading biopharmaceutical companies related to drug design and development.

Another tie-up with a foreign university will be with Wageningen University from the Netherlands, offering students a chance to do a second major in food science technology, to learn new technologies for food waste reduction and conversion, food nutrition for an ageing population, as well as risk analysis and management in food safety.

Here’s a list of the nine new undergraduate degree programmes NTU will be offering:

Nanyang Business School

- Bachelor of Accountancy and Master of Science in Financial Engineering (includes a seven-week exchange in Carnegie Mellon University in the US)

- Bachelor of Business and Master of Science in Financial Engineering (includes a seven-week exchange in Carnegie Mellon University)

- Bachelor of Accountancy with a Minor in Strategic Communication

- Bachelor of Business with a Minor in Strategic Communication

College of Engineering

- Bachelor of Engineering in Materials Engineering with a Second Major in Medical Biology

- Bachelor of Engineering in Bioengineering with a Second Major in Pharmaceutical Engineering

- Bachelor of Engineering in Materials Engineering with a Second Major in Pharmaceutical Engineering

- Bachelor of Engineering in Bioengineering with a Second Major in Food Science and Technology

College of Science

- Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with Second Major in Biomedical Materials