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Towards Greater Heights
Monday 11 January 2021, 08:00am - 05:00pm
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KUCHING: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) has high hopes of enhancing its prominence and visibility on a global scale.  In fact, establishing learning centres overseas is one of the institution’s targets under its Strategic Plan 2021-2025. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Unimas ranks among the top 1,001 globally. It has also gained recognition as one of the top 201 universities in the world as per Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings. The university is determined to reach even greater heights. Unimas Global drives the academic institution’s endeavours of becoming a world-renowned university and plays a key role in Unimas’ event management, protocol, promotions, branding, and corporate relations activities.

In a recent interview with New Sarawak Tribune, Unimas Global director Assoc Prof Dr Shanti Faridah Salleh shared more on the university’s rebranding exercise as well as efforts to achieve the academic institution’s global visibility aspirations.

New Sarawak Tribune: Could you elaborate on Unimas Global and its rebranding exercise?

Shanti: Unimas Global is a hybrid responsibility centre established in 2017, whereby two different responsibility centres were merged, namely the corporate office and the international office. This is because if you are talking about going global, you cannot be talking about just corporate affairs per se.

I first joined Unimas Global in January last year. Even a few months before August last year, we were already talking about branding and how to make ourselves more global.

After we discussed with our Vice Chancellor and obtained feedback from the faculties, we felt it was about time to implement some restructuring and rebranding of Unimas Global.

That was when we started having three main dedicated units under Unimas Global, namely the international unit, corporate relations and administration unit, and strategic communication and branding unit.

The key difference is that we have made the strategic communication and branding unit more visible with dedicated resources under the unit itself. Prior to this, we did not have dedicated resources there.

How much has Unimas Global achieved in its rebranding exercise?

I believe the big difference we have made was when we incorporated the global theme and initiative in the new strategic plan.

Although it was there before in the previous strategic plan, we made it more visible for the new one. We set a very clear KPI and target, and the activities that we put in are explicitly documented in the strategic planning document.

This means we have a very clear blueprint and direction for the next five years. That is why we are confident if we follow the plan well, the dream of having Unimas as a global brand will become a reality very soon.

What are the vision and mission of Unimas Global?

We are responsible for Unimas’ branding and visibility. Our aim is to make Unimas visible globally and we would also like to act as a catalyst for Unimas to become  global.  

 

Could you elaborate on the tagline ‘contemporary and forward-looking’?

This tagline has been around since the establishment of Unimas and it is one that we would like to keep until now. This is still our tagline as it is very evergreen.

However, with our new strategic plan, we have come up with a new theme — ‘inclusive, global and sustainable’.

We want to be known as a university which is very inclusive in the way that we operate, our networking and so on. We also want Unimas to be known and acknowledged as a global brand — to become a university of global standard and with global recognition. Sustainability is also an aspect that we want to associate ourselves with.

So for the five strategic focuses under our plan, everything revolves around that theme of ‘inclusive, global, and sustainable’.

What are Unimas’ plans on really achieving its visibility goal?

We are not doing too bad in terms of visibility but it can be improved and enhanced.

The first thing is to enhance our national or local position and, at the same time, we are trying to put ourselves on the global platform to be recognised at the international level.

Unimas has achieved very good rankings in terms of Times Higher Education rankings and QS World University Rankings. In terms of Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we rank among the top 1,001 in the world.

In terms of subject ranking, three programmes in Unimas are among the top 1,000 programmes in the world namely, Life Sciences, Engineering & Technology, and Business & Economics.

With Unimas’ global recognition goal in mind, how many international students does Unimas have?

Last year, we targeted to have about 1,000 international students, including those in short-term and long-term programmes. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, that number has been reduced by about 50 percent.

We do have our targets and KPI for international students. Our fourth strategic focus under our plan is on global visibility and prominence – whereby one of the strategic commitments is on internationalisation.

Here we are talking about internationalisation not only in terms of international students, but the number of international partners. We have around 130 or 140 partners established worldwide as of last year.

We are also talking in terms of research; we want to have more collaborations internationally and we are also looking at hopefully having a lot of Unimas joint programmes with other international universities.

For instance, we have a lot of collaborations with universities in China. Last year, we signed 30 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with China universities alone.

Furthermore, we are looking at internationalisation at home — meaning we want everything in Unimas to be of international standard. For example, we want our programmes to be certified by international centres and accreditation bodies. That is in the pipelines and plans.

Where are most of Unimas’ international students from?

We have students from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China — these are the three main locations. We are also aiming for Indonesian students. I think students from Indonesia are more into attending universities with grants and scholarships.

For our students from China, the most popular course is Business & Economics. But now, some are going into the Language Faculty because of English. Aside from that, Engineering is another programme which appeals to their interests.

However, due to some requirements from accreditation bodies, it is a bit slow at the moment.

 

What is the way forward for Unimas Global?

I believe the way forward is for us to provide wings for Unimas to fly. This is so that when people outside Malaysia talk about Unimas, they can associate themselves with what is happening here.

Of course, establishing ourselves locally is also important.

 
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