Speech by SUSS Provost, Professor Robbie Goh at the SUSS Faculty Appreciation Event 2025

Date: 25 Jul 2025

Mrs Mildred Tan, Chairman, SUSS Board of Trustees

Professor Tan Tai Yong, President, SUSS

Esteemed award winners, colleagues and guests

 
1. Thank you all for taking the time to join us at the 2025 Faculty Appreciation Event. 

2. This is always a joyous occasion, when we celebrate educators who have made a significant impact in our educational endeavours over the past year. 

Teaching Awards

3. Today, we present 269 awards across six categories:
  • Outstanding Teaching Award (OTA)
  • Excellence in Teaching Award (ETA)
  • Special Award in Innovative Pedagogy (SAiP)
  • StudyGuide Excellence Award
  • Lecturer Service Award
  • Senior Associate Faculty Appointment
4. The selection process is very rigorous, and I want to thank my colleagues involved in the process – particularly those in the Teaching and Learning Centre – for all their hard work.  If you interact with our award winners past or present, or with our Senior Associate Faculty, or if you look at our award-winning study material, I think you will be convinced of the thoroughness of the selection process, and the quality of the winners.  

5. This is no more than befitting our vision to be the leading university in learning for life.  Our calling is a special one, because our students are special.  Adult learners, working adults, students in the sensitive helping professions, all face challenges, whether it be juggling studies with work and families, or having the courage to re-skill at a later age, or financing their studies, or acquiring the skills and sensitivities required in dealing with vulnerable clients.  All these students need highly effective teaching methods, and highly talented educators, to facilitate their learning journeys.  

6. Our educators – faculty and associates alike – continue to work hard and do a good job, and this is true in general, not just confined to today’s award winners.  In case you think this is just a biased subjective opinion, let me offer evidence from the most objective and critical of judges – our own students.  I will just give you one data point: our Electronic Course Evaluation or eCE scores have been increasing year on year for the past few years, for both faculty and associates alike.  In the past year, just under half of our AFs achieved eCE scores of 4.30 or higher on our 5-point scale.  For faculty, it was more than 60% who scored 4.30 or higher.  This score is no mean feat in any university, but is especially noteworthy considering the educational needs and demands of our adult learners.

Continued Improvement Efforts

7. Of course we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.  As an applied university, we have an even greater responsibility to train our students in accordance with industry and societal needs – needs that are constantly evolving, due largely to factors such as digitalisation, AI, demographic changes, and geopolitical and economic uncertainties.  

8. There are many things that SUSS as an applied adult-learning university could focus on – probably too many things for any university to successfully implement – but this is my priority, must-do list:

  1. Teaching and learning with AI: this has become, and will continue to be, an ubiquitous part of the teaching and learning process.  Our response cannot be to police its use, which is both futile and self-defeating.  Instead, we need to teach in a different way – teaching students to learn with AI, including things like prompt engineering, critical and creative approaches, and proper assessment.

  2. Nurturing core transferable skills: right-sizing the disciplinary major, to leave room for training in skills that facilitate later upskilling and reskilling – skills like communication, teamwork, client engagement, UX and design thinking, and others.

  3. Aligning students with rapid industry changes: this means keeping our students employment-ready through work attachments, practicums, industry capstones, entrepreneurship and venture training, and related applied methods.

  4. Innovating andragogy: constantly reviewing the methods that enhance adult learning, including Edtech, adaptive learning, assessment and learning support; and testing these methods against impact and outcomes.
9. SUSS continues not only to preach, but also to practice, these strategies:  

  • Our Gen AI committee spearheads projects and practices which study ways in which Gen AI can be incorporated into our teaching and learning.  We also have representatives on the joint Universities committee that shares best practices in the use of Gen AI.

  • We continue to refine our courses in the major, to ensure that we do not over-teach in the face of rapidly changing industry conditions, and thus saving curriculum space for the training of core transferrable skills.  Our Core Curriculum taught by the College of Interdisciplinary and Experiential Learning (CIEL) is the office primarily tasked with this, but CIEL actually lays a foundation for the continuation of critical core skills in later years of study.

  • We also continue to place considerable emphasis on industry-ready skills.  From the next academic year onwards, our newest feature in this respect will be the interdisciplinary capstone projects for teams of final-year students in many of our programmes.  This will be challenging both for our students working in the interdisciplinary teams as well as for the colleagues supervising them, but it is through this challenging process that our students will be made more adaptive, creative and flexible for the coming changes in the workplace.

  • And we continue to develop research and communities of practice in andragogy and continuing education, learning together with like-minded universities around the world.
10. Let me just give more details for 2 recent developments that may interest our colleagues: 

  1. The first is the brainchild of our Learning Services cluster: our online study material, the  iStudyGuide, will from this semester be rebranded as iSmartGuide.  iSmartGuide has many new Edtech- and AI-enabled features, including AI Tutor to help students gather and organise information within a single course material, as well as across different courses for multi-disciplinary learning.  It also has features like AI Quiz and gamification, to ensure engaged learning.  The iSmartGuide was recently honoured with the Recognition of Excellence Award 2025 from OpenGov Asia.  In addition, the iSmartGuide has been shortlisted for the “Best AI Innovation Award (Higher Ed)” at the EDUtech Asia 2025 Awards.  I encourage colleagues to try out the new iSmartGuide for themselves.

  2. Secondly, SUSS has established an “Andragogy for Impact” strategic thrust.  This will align our existing teaching and learning efforts (including EdTech, Adaptive learning, andragogy etc) with outcomes and impact indicators (including things like skills certification, employment outcomes, career progression of our students, and so on).  We have begun research and best practice collaborations with like-minded universities in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, China and elsewhere, as well as research partnerships with organisations like MOM, NTUC and in the private sector.  The goal is nothing less than for SUSS to become a thought leader in andragogy theory and practice, which is the logical development for us, particularly since we have the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL) as part of us.  If you have interests that align with the “Andragogy for Impact” strategic thrust, I encourage you to approach either TLC or NICE (the Node for Impactful Continuing Education), which are the two main offices for this thrust.

SUSS’s Mission and Positioning

11. I share these ongoing efforts and strategic directions, firstly to keep colleagues updated of plans and developments; but secondly, also to give you a sense of the unique mission and place of SUSS.  When we say that we are a university that “inspires learning for life and impacting lives,” this is not just a motherhood statement.  It reflects a lot of planning, hard work, financial resources, research and practice that go into achieving this.  We are not going to be “just another” university; our aim is to become a thought leader, a globally-connected innovator, in the field of andragogy.  It is only in this way that we can really make a difference in the all-important business of transforming the lives of our students, and training them in turn to impact the lives of others. 

Conclusion

12. In conclusion, I believe many here were drawn to SUSS because of a congruence of values and purposes.  I hope that hearing about our current developments and strategic plans, and networking with our past and present excellence educators, will only confirm and strengthen your resolve to be part of the SUSS mission.  With the commitment and hard work of the SUSS community, I am confident that our brand and impact will continue to grow strongly.

13. I want to thank my colleagues in the Teaching and Learning Centre, not just for administering the awards, but also for doing much of the heavy lifting year-in and year-out to drive teaching excellence.  I also thank the colleagues in Learning Services for partnering with faculty in educational and especially Edtech innovations.  Thanks also to colleagues in the Associate Management Office, not just for organising this evening’s event, but also in overseeing the welfare of that large and important group of our SUSS community, namely the Associate Faculty.  

14. But this point bears repeating: SUSS’s aspirations as an educational institution depend on all of you, on the dedication, hard work and talent of our faculty and administrators.  It only takes a few bad actors to spoil our reputation and derail our progress, but it takes all of us to reach our goal.

15. Thank you all for being a part of SUSS’s mission, and my heartiest congratulations to all of this year’s winners.