Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh and Salam Sejahtera.

Welcome Alumni! It is a great honour for me to serve University of Malaya as the 10^th Vice Chancellor and I look forward to working closely with the UM Alumni community, students, faculty and staff of the University.

An important message I would like to convey is the significance of the alumni community.  The education and experience an individual receives at UM are an invaluable investment for life in the real world and the knowledge and skills of the individual alumnus constitute a major asset for the institution.  University of Malaya has over 100,000 alumni, many of whom have gone on to be renowned and illustrious personalities and leaders in the corporate world, academia, art and culture, government and public institutions.  This is a tremendous force that can be drawn upon for the development of the university, society and the nation.  We therefore welcome our alumni to participate in our activities, suggestions and assistance to the university in meeting the challenges of the modern world and in fostering meaningful and lifelong relationships for our mutual benefits.

The University of Malaya is the premier research university in Malaysia with currently more than 23,000 students and 2613 academic staff located in 20 faculties and academic centres.  We aim to be one of the leading universities in the world in education, teaching and research and in order to reach this goal; I have set ourselves five sub goals:

1)     To strengthen research activities by establishing Research Clusters and Organizing Research Culture Camps for young lecturers;

2)     To raise the standard of academic publications by implementing a clear academic Key Performance Index and establishing an ISI publications unit;

3)     To expand the scope and depth of teaching and academic supervision by intensifying international recruiting through international recruitment drives and the establishment of Offshore Offices;

4)     To attract high quality undergraduate and postgraduate students by establishing Offshore Offices for international students recruitment (currently we have one in Tehran and one in Beijing) and by attracting first class students for postgraduate studies at the University;

5)     To prepare all final year students for life after graduation through a series of six day Motivational and Financial Management Workshops.

In addition, new criteria have been identified for the promotion of academic staff; and new incentives have been put in place for academic staff to publish in reputable journals and with leading publishing houses.

Thus I invite you to be an active member of our establishment, so that we can work together and be engaged in pursuing our vision and passion and build on our strengths and talents to re-establish UM in its rightful place as an academic world leader.

With that, my very best wishes and hope that I will be seeing you soon here in UM.  

Yours sincerely,

GHAUTH JASMON