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Prof Lily Kong to head SMU, first Singaporean to assume role

SINGAPORE — Professor Lily Kong will take over the helm of Singapore Management University (SMU) as its fifth president from next year, becoming the first Singaporean to head the university.

Professor Lily Kong will take over the helm of Singapore Management University as its fifth president from next year, becoming the first Singaporean to head a publicly-funded university here. TODAY file photo

Professor Lily Kong will take over the helm of Singapore Management University as its fifth president from next year, becoming the first Singaporean to head a publicly-funded university here. TODAY file photo

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SINGAPORE — Professor Lily Kong will take over the helm of Singapore Management University (SMU) as its fifth president from next year, becoming the first Singaporean to head the university. 

The prominent 53-year-old academic leader, prolific researcher and educator is also the second woman in SMU’s history to assume the office. 

Before joining SMU as provost in September 2015, Prof Kong spent 24 years at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and headed the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences there.

She will take over the reins from Professor Arnoud De Meyer on Jan 1 next year. 

Announcing her appointment in a media briefing on Tuesday (April 3), Mr Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of the SMU Board of Trustees, said that Prof Kong was appointed after a seven-month-long global search through more than 100 candidates.

While being a Singaporean woman was a plus, it was “clearly not a deciding factor” for Prof Kong, he added.

Mr Ho was proud that SMU has appointed — for the first time in its 18-year history — an internal candidate and social scientist as president, with an academic pedigree that “ranks on par or even better than external candidates”. It was a “unanimous decision” by the board, he said. 

In NUS previously, Prof Kong held several senior academic positions, in both the provost’s and president’s office. 

Well-known internationally as a social, cultural and urban geographer, she is widely regarded as a thought leader in the study of social and cultural change in Asian cities.

Pointing out that SMU has reached a point where it made its name as a business school, Mr Ho said that Prof Kong’s background as a social scientist would help steer the university into newer directions to become a “specialised social sciences and management university” in the region and the world.

Prof Kong herself said that the humanities and social sciences play an important role in “informing” and giving added value to students in disciplines such as law and business, for instance. 

A student doing organisational behaviour and human resources — typically a business school’s field — would benefit from having a psychology background and knowledge, to have a “better understanding in organisational behaviour”, she explained. 

On the challenges that the higher education sector faces, Prof Kong said that universities would have to continually think about how they can help their students stay relevant as economic structures change rapidly and there is technological disruption. Mature students who are among the working population in need of “upskilling and reskilling” may also look to the universities to provide this.

Prof De Meyer, whose term will end on Dec 31 this year, will have led SMU for more than eight years by then, becoming its longest-serving president.

Under his watch, Mr Ho said that the SMU Vision 2025 — a 10-year vision for the university to become an “iconic global-city university in Asia” — was developed and conceptualised.

It was also under the Belgian’s leadership that the SMU brand grew significantly, Mr Ho said, as did its endowment fund, campus and building infrastructure, as well as the quality of programmes and students. SMU’s outreach activities also flourished under his term, with its internationalisation efforts in South-east Asia, China and Europe.

After stepping down, Prof De Meyer will take a primary and executive role in continuing to shape SMU, on a part-time basis.

 

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