Not Born in Singapore

by Tng Ying Hui

  American Dr Robert A. Brown arrived in Singapore in 1996 while on a tour around Asia to decide where MIT

  should set up its first overseas campus. Then-Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan hosted Dr Brown. From Dr Tan, Dr Brown discovered that the government had visions to transform Singapore’s universities into leading colleges in Asia, and make Singapore the “Boston of the East”. “Singapore had a progressive view of where they wanted to take their universities to,” said Dr Brown. He also felt that Singapore had an advantage over other Asian countries as English was the country’s official language.

  When he returned to MIT, Dr Brown assembled a panel to assess the case for a partnership with Singapore’s universities. The 30-member panel consists of faculty members who came to Singapore to assess the strengths of individual engineering departments and institutional infrastructure. The team’s report identified ways to strengthen the faculties and infrastructure at NUS and NTU so as to transform them from teaching institutions to public research universities. That was the first time MIT and Singapore collaborated and each went away understanding the benefits it could get out of the collaboration. MIT was “comfortable” with coming to Singapore, as Dr Brown recognised that the nation had great potential to be a global education hub.

  Convinced that the government would be committed to making NUS and NTU the best universities in Asia, Dr Brown, who later became provost of MIT, gave the green light to start the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA). The SMA aimed to develop Singapore’s engineering and life sciences postgraduate research. Back then, Singapore was not known as a research and development hub in Southeast Asia. SMA was created in the hope of changing that. Most of the lectures were Engineering classes. Classes conducted in Boston were held live online with students in Singapore. The lecturers used voice-activated cameras in video conferencing, so that the cameras would automatically rotate to follow their voices and focus on them when they moved around the classroom in Boston. The video conferencing enabled students from both countries to interact with one another easily. Because of the time difference between the two countries, classes were often conducted early in the morning in Massachusetts and late in the evening in Singapore.

  Another highlight of the programme was its exchange programme during the summer break. The SMA faculty members from MIT travelled to Singapore to meet their students. In turn, the students spent a semester or two at MIT with their professors to collaborate on research.

  “This was a huge advancement. It was before the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), before the Biopolis, and before the big technology jump which occurred in 2001,” recalled Dr Brown, who studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin and did his PhD at the University of Minnesota. Singapore and Singaporeans alike benefited from the partnership with MIT. Said Prof Yue Chee Yoon, who was NTU’s liaison in SMA, “MIT was open to sharing many of their best practices. They were willing to give Singapore insights into the key ingredients and success factors in a top research university.” Through SMA, NUS and NTU not only built up their research capabilities, but also raised their profiles internationally. SMA was key to attracting higher-calibre academics to Singapore and more top universities to collaborate with the Singapore universities, said Prof Yue.

  Dr Brown left MIT in 2005 to become president of Boston University, a position he continues to hold. He is a founding member of Singapore’s International Academic Advisory Panel (IAAP). The IAAP was established in 1997 by the Ministry of Education to advise them on how Singapore’s universities can become world-class institutes. Its role has since been broadened to encompass the provision of guidance on the development of Singapore’s tertiary sector as a whole. The IAAP meets every two to three years.

  Dr Brown is still a member of the IAAP and takes a keen interest in the research and higher education landscape in Singapore. In June 2015, he came to Singapore for the biennial IAAP meeting. He feels that Singapore will continue to be Asia’s education hub. To stay ahead, he advises that Singapore needs to continue to attract the best faculty and students from all over the world. In December 2005, he was conferred the Honorary Citizen Award, which celebrates foreigners who have made outstanding contributions to Singapore.

  References

  Dr Tony Tan, “Education in a Globalised Economy” (Speech at NTU Ministerial Forum, NTUC, February 19, 1998), http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/1998/190298.htm

  Jeremy Sor, “Singapore-MIT Alliance: Impacting the World Through Education and Research,” Knowledge Enterprise Online, February 2009, http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/ke/0902/articles/pg02.php

  Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore Confers Prestigious Honorary Citizen Award on Dr Tsutomu Kanai and Dr Robert Brown, December 28, 2005.

  Interviews with Prof Robert Brown over the phone in January 2015 and Dr Yue Chee Yoon

  in July 2015.

  Dr Robert A.Brown

  United States of America, b.1951

  Brother Joseph McNally

  Big Brother to the Arts

  Ireland-born Brother Joseph McNally’s vision and steadfast belief in the merits of a multi-disciplinary arts school, which exists today as LASALLE College of the Arts, has paved the way for many talented youths to hone their skills and improve their employment prospects.

  Brother Joseph McNally arrived in Singapore from Ireland in 1946 at the age of 23, as a member of the De La Salle Order of Christian Brothers. He started teaching at St Joseph’s Institution (SJI). From young, Brother Joseph had a talent for art. Just before coming to Singapore, he had won a nationwide competition where he drew a self-portrait using oil, his favourite medium at the time. In Singapore, he continued pursuing his passion, frequenting the Art Society every Tuesday evening, painting alongside the eminent Nanyang Style artists, Chen Wen Hsi and Liu Kang. After staying in Singapore for five years, Brother Joseph moved to Malaya. Throughout the 1950s, he taught at various schools affiliated to the De La Salle Order in Malaya. During the 1960s, he furthered his studies in Rome, Italy, and later in New York at Columbia University, where he obtained his master’s and PhD degrees.

  Brother Joseph returned to Singapore to teach at St Patrick’s School in 1973. When he became principal two years later, he instituted radical changes like abolishing corporal punishment in the school, explaining that every child had his own nature which should be respected. He also fought to place arts education in the core curriculum, believing it to be crucial to the children's development. He remained the principal of St Patrick’s for eight years before retiring in the early 1980s.

  Brother Joseph underwent cardiac bypass surgery in 1984. Instead of spending time resting and recuperating, he focused on realising his dream of starting an arts school. This was a bold endeavour and he forged ahead very much alone in this as the arts at that time did not yet figure highly on Singapore’s education agenda.

  St Patrick’s Arts Centre occupied two classrooms on the premises of St Patrick’s School in the east of Singapore, and offered full-time studies in visual arts and music. When the school opened, it had 27 students. By 1985, enrolments had risen and a second campus at Telok Kurau was opened. St Patrick’s Arts Centre was named LASALLE College of the Arts and Brother Joseph became its first president. The same year, he became a Singapore citizen.

  The going was not always easy for the school in the first decade. It chalked up debt that reportedly ran into the millions. Brother Joseph, in an oral history interview, said of himself, “I am a creative person, interested in creativity and not particularly interested in money.” Yet Brother Joseph was determined to carry his vision through to completion. He dug into his own pockets and financed the school from his retirement gratuity. The school fees that were collected went straight into paying the salaries of teachers. There were also other issues relating to bureaucratic restrictions over the hiring of staff who did not have the requisite paper qualifications and the initial difficulties the school faced in setting up a drama department, Broth
er Joseph recalled in his oral history interview.

  In 1992, the college moved to a bigger space at what is now known as the Goodman Arts Centre. It was memorable for Brother Joseph, as the school finally had a home of its own.

  In 1993, SIA donated $15 million to the school and this money went into clearing its debts and also into developing facilities like a library and a canteen. The school was renamed the LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts and in 2007, it became known as LASALLE College of the Arts.

  As of 2014, LASALLE has about 2,700 students at its award-winning main campus in McNally Street and a second campus at Winstedt Road.

  Brother Joseph was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 1997. He retired from his position as president emeritus of the school that year, but he remained active in education and art circles. His former students remember him as an inspiring teacher. Sculptor Victor Tan, one of his former students, said in a 2004 The Straits Times interview, “I can never forget how the door of his studio was always open to his students. He’d come and visit us in our own studios to see how we were doing.”

  When Brother Joseph was not teaching, he would be sculpting and painting in his studio in LASALLE. When he sculpted, nothing else could take away his attention from his work. He would sometimes sit silently in front of a piece of wood and when asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I’m talking to the wood.” His sculptures are strongly influenced by what he saw in his homeland.

  Brother Joseph grew up in a village called Ballintubber in County Mayo, Ireland. The archaeological sites in Ballintubber, mound-shaped with a cavernous centre, provided inspiration for the spiral shapes often seen in his sculptures.

  In 2002, Brother Joseph died of a heart attack. Two years after his passing, Singapore erected a larger version of his sculpture “Counsellor II”, which depicts a teacher gazing upon a child, in County Mayo. The original sculpture is 90cm tall and the new version, 2.6 metres. Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo, who met Brother Joseph at SJI and is a patron of LASALLE, led a 30-member delegation for the inauguration of the sculpture. The installation was to thank the Irish people for giving Brother Joseph to Singapore and to honour him for his contributions, he said.

  The Irish Times reported in a posthumous article that Brother Joseph said in a documentary shortly before he died, “I would like to be remembered…as an educator in the classroom, as a principal of a school and as an educator through the arts...I would see myself really as an educator, first and last.” As Yeo said in the same article, “He played a seminal role in arts education. He dived in where angels feared to tread.”

  References

  “Carving a niche for himself,” Irish Times, April 2, 2003.

  Clara Chow, “Heart at Work,” The Straits Times, July 10, 2004.

  Clara Chow, “Thou ART remembered,” The Straits Times, 11 November 2002.

  George Yeo, “Official Opening of the Brother Joseph McNally Exhibition Titled ‘An Invitation to Nature’” (Speech at the opening of Brother Joseph McNally Exhibition, Dublin, March 26, 2003), http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/view-html?filename=2003032701.htm.

  “History and Milstones,” LASALLE College of the Arts, accessed December 2014,

  http://www.lasalle.edu.sg/about/history-milestones/

  Joseph McNally interviewed by Bonny Tan, January 9, 1997, accession number 001876/04, transcript, Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.

  Kana Shekaran, “Nature’s Inspiration,” The Straits Times, November 8, 1992.

  “LASALLE Turns 30,” The Straits Times, November 4, 2014.

  Brother Joseph Mcnally

  Ireland, 1923-2002

  Prof John Norman Miksic

  The Don of Digs

  Since his arrival in 1984, United States-born Professor John Norman Miksic has conducted major excavations at 15 sites in Singapore. His archaeological findings brought to light that the Singapore narrative actually started 500 years before the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles.

  Singaporean youngsters today are going further back in time to learn about Singapore’s history. The new lower secondary school history textbook, Singapore: The Making of a Nation-State, 1300-1975, chronicles the country’s past from the 14th century, instead of starting in 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles, then governor of Bencoolen, stumbled upon a sleepy Malay fishing village. The work of Professor John Miksic is behind this revision. Prof Miksic’s archaeological finds, which first began in 1984 at Fort Canning, mean that 13- and 14-year-old students here now learn that Singapore was an ancient city and had been a thriving port-of-call since 1350.

  Prof Miksic is known for having led major archaeological excavations across Southeast Asia. His findings in Singapore have amounted to eight tons of artefacts. Prof Miksic’s interest in the past stems from his childhood. While growing up in rural New York, he uncovered many old arrowheads at his family’s 150-year-old farm and this made him wonder what life was like on the farm without modern technology. His curiosity fuelled a 50-year career in archaeology.

  Prof Miksic came to Singapore in 1984 at the invitation of the National Museum of Singapore. The museum had asked him to lead a team in the inaugural archaeological excavation of Fort Canning. There were records like the Malay Annals, which suggested that a city existed here in the 14th century. But this had not been established as a fact. Thus, the excavation was to provide empirical evidence.

  After two days of digging, the team—made up of Prof Miksic, men serving their National Service, and staff from the National Museum of Singapore—found green-glazed Chinese ceramics, known as celadons, dating from the 14th-century Yuan Dynasty. They also found earthenware made in Asia. These included roof tiles, which suggested that the building on Fort Canning was an important temple, since all other roofs were usually made of dried fronds (called attap) at that time. The team’s findings finally brought to light details of Singapore’s past. “You’re recovering a lost memory in the form of a scene,” said Prof Miksic, recalling the dig.

  In 1987, Prof Miksic, who has also led major excavations in Indonesia, including at the ancient Borobudur temple, accepted an offer to teach in the Department of History at NUS. To date, he has led 11 excavations in Singapore, at sites like the St Andrew’s Cathedral, the Padang, Empress Place and Parliament House.

  His excavations have uncovered 100 Chinese coins and good quality Chinese porcelain, which hinted that Singapore was already a thriving commercial and industrial centre before Raffles arrived. Most of his finds—a total of 500,000 pieces—are “junk”, Prof Miksic said, but they reveal stories of the past. These artefacts proved that a settlement had existed at the mouth of the Singapore River—where the Esplanade is today—since the end of the 13th century, and that it became a kingdom and bustling port called Singapura. He has documented this evidence in a recent book, Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300–1800.

  Prof Miksic has always been passionate about making archaeology accessible to the public, stressing the importance of teaching history without jargon. For instance, at a TEDxNUS talk in 2010, he used pictures of Singapore’s past and present to explain his archaeological findings. He gives public lectures four to five times a year. Some of his findings are also displayed in Singapore’s public museums.

  In 2011, Prof Miksic was consulted on the historical aspects of the game World of Temasek, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that recreates life in 14th-century Singapore, initiated by the National Heritage Board. In the game, one’s avatar interacts with other characters that existed in Singapore. The virtual character has to build relationships based on correct cultural behaviour in order to gain points. The game has practical relevance. Most of these social structures have lasted through the centuries and knowing them will help build professional relationships, Prof Miksic said.

  In the new History textbook for lower secondary school students, readers will find that textual and first-hand visual sources are used to flesh out the content in the textbook.
Students also have access to some 4,000 artefacts from the 14th to 20th centuries unearthed by Prof Miksic and his digging team. “The wide range allows students to understand the changes throughout the centuries,” Prof Miksic said. As part of the Ministry's new inquiry-based approach to learning, they examine the artefacts to understand the historical context in which they were found. Prof Miksic has also trained History teachers to teach the new syllabus.

  Prof Miksic has spent the last 31 years nudging a mindset change about the country’s past—that it is not an “historical accident”. Empirical evidence from his excavations have established that Singapore is indeed a nation with ancient roots, and having existed for 700 years, Singapore does not have to fret over its survival.

  Today, Prof Miksic works at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies. He enjoys teaching and does not see himself giving it up. He lectures during both semesters at the NUS and through the summer breaks too. An ex-student, Derek Heng, who is now an Associate Professor of History at Yale-NUS College , said Prof Miksic’s classes on pre-modern history in Singapore were an eye-opener and had sparked his own research interest in Singapore’s history. Prof Miksic is married to a Chinese Malaysian and they have two children. His family resides in the United States.

  References

  Derek Heng and Kwa Chong Guan, “Digging up Singapore’s history,” The Straits Times,

  February 21, 2015, http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/digging-up-singapores-history

  Jane Peterson, “In New Textbook, the Story of Singapore Begins 500 Years Earlier,”