Binding ties through awards
By AMINUDDIN MOHSIN
educate@thestar.com.my
EDUCATION links between Malaysia and Australia go back a long way and continues to be strengthened through scholarships.
Australian High Commissioner Miles Kupa said it was heartening to see Malaysian students walking through the halls of Australian universities long after the Colombo Plan which spearheaded education links between both nations in the 1950s.
“The presence of Malaysian students in our institutions adds great value to the international education experience of both countries,” he said.
Kupa presented the Malaysia Australia Colombo Plan Commemoration Scholarships (MACC) and the Australian government’s Endeavour Awards scholarships to 14 Malaysians at a hotel recently.
Kupa (fourth from right) posing with the Malaysian Australian Alumni Council president Pat Yeoh (second from left) and recipients after the award ceremony.
The award has four categories - the postgraduate award, the vocational education and training (VET) award and the research fellowship award.
“I am pleased to note that Malaysians continue to excel in the Endeavour Awards, with the 12 recipients this year bringing the total number of Malaysians receiving the award to 72 since its inception in 2005.
“This year a total of RM 35,000 fee waivers have been offered by Australian universities for the MACC scholarships and approximately RM3.3mil will be provided by the Australian government for the awards,” added Kupa.
International Islamic University Malaysia law lecturer Prof Aiman Mohd Sulaiman, who earned her Doctor of Legal Sciences at Bond University in 2000, will be returning to her alma mater to conduct research under its research fellowship award.
“I have also attended forums and summits in the country as part of my responsibilities as a lecturer but now I’m going back to conduct research on related party transactions.
“What is important though is determining what should be incorporated into Business Law and identifying best practices for self regulation,” said Prof Aiman.
Theva Raj will be pursuing a Master’s degree in Media Arts and Production.
The youngest recipient was Kimberley Lim who received a scholarship to pursue an associate degree in Business Management at the Sydney Institute of Business and Technology under the VET segment of the awards.
“I just completed my Diploma in Interior Design at Taylor’s University and now I’m taking a different direction by pursuing business management.
“It is a totally new course for me, from creative studies to business, I’m worried I might not be able to cope but at the same time, I want to enhance my financial management skills as I have plans to set up my own interior design enterprise in the future,” she said
She added that Interior Design was a tough course and those intending to pursue it should work hard and have a passion for the subject.
Terence Theva Raj, a former Animation lecturer at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology and one of the earliest graduates of Film and Animation from Multimedia University, received a scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in Media Arts and Production at the University of Technology, Sydney.
He said he was unable to secure funding to pursue the course previously.
“So you can imagine how happy I am. The scholarship comes with a 100% waiver of tuition fees,” he said, adding that he had yet to tell his parents who would be “ecstatic”.
Asked what he intended to do after completing his post graduate studies, Theva Raj said he might want to lecture, but did not rule out other options such as working in production houses.
After presenting the scholarships, Kupa explained that he would like Malaysians students in Australia to act as ambassadors and persuade Australians to consider studying in Malaysia even if it were for a short period.
“By coming to Malaysia they get a better understanding of culture, business and other industries such as tropical agriculture or Islamic finance,” he said.
Kupa added that there were about 700 Australian students in Malaysia as opposed to the thousands of Malaysian students there.
He added that more student exchange programme should be held and cited a recent design competition where six teams of Australians and Malaysians were attached to an architect’s firm to come up with a mock design for an Australian-Malaysia intercultural centre at Brickfields.
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