In Conversation with…

The College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) was launched on 8 December, and offers an enhanced undergraduate experience for students of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FASS) and the Faculty of Science (FoS).

CHS marks a deeper emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. Students can pursue intellectual breadth and depth across disciplines, with more than 1,000 modules offered by both faculties. CHS will accept its inaugural cohort in Academic Year 2021/2022.

CHS Co-Deans Prof Robbie GOH (FASS) and Prof SUN Yeneng (FoS) share their sentiments on how CHS will enrich students’ learning experiences.

How do you feel about the establishment of CHS?

Prof Robbie Goh: It is part of an educational institution's moral duty to anticipate, as best as we can, the circumstances that our students will face, and prepare them accordingly. CHS is a forward-looking initiative, and will do much to prepare our students for the disruptions and uncertainties of the future.

Prof Sun Yeneng: CHS provides the critical foundation that enables students to synthesise ideas and perspectives from different disciplines. It is this interdisciplinarity that will better prepare our students to become problem-solvers in an uncertain world marked by technological change and random shocks like COVID-19.

How will CHS improve students’ educational outcomes?

Prof Goh: The beauty of the CHS curriculum is that it is not "either-or," but "both-and."  It marries breadth and interdisciplinarity. While the minimum requirements for the majors will go down, thus facilitating double-majors and major-minor(s) combinations, students can use their unrestrictive elective space to do more major modules. They can therefore read more major modules, if they choose, than under the current system. At the same time, the new curriculum facilitates any combination of majors and minors offered by both faculties, without any administrative obstacles.

Prof Sun: CHS opens a new world of possibilities and pathways, giving our students unprecedented flexibility to chart their own learning journeys based on their interests, aptitudes and career aspirations. Students can choose to specialise, or build expertise in multiple disciplines. They can pair complementary disciplines and leverage the synergies between these disciplines.

What are you most excited about? Are there any programmes/modules/pedagogies that you hope to set up?

Prof Goh: There are many exciting things for students to look forward to. They can look forward to getting a double degree (with contrasting majors) in exactly the same amount of time as an Honours degree, without overloading or extending their term of study. There are integrated modules in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Asian Studies that will focus on the big issues in each of these three areas. There will also be challenging interdisciplinary modules taught by teams of colleagues from different departments and both faculties, that will stimulate students' thinking about current issues from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Prof Sun: The Faculty of Science intends to scale up our Data Science and Analytics undergraduate programme into a CHS flagship programme open to all students in CHS. This will equip graduates with digital literacy skills, which are highly valued in the modern workplace. A new cross-disciplinary programme in Data Science and Economics will also be offered. This is timely as the advent of Big Data also opens up new opportunities - for example, economists and policymakers can gain insights about economic systems and choices with a higher degree of precision using data science. Many students already benefit from workplace exposure, and opportunities for experiential learning will be further expanded, to intertwine working and learning on-the-job.