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2019 in Review 2019 was a challenging but rewarding year for CNM. Our new leadership and administrative team continued, in their first full year of service, CNM’s tradition of excellence proficiencies in teaching, research, practice, and administration. We celebrated, in conjunction with the 90th founding anniversary of FASS, our 20th anniversary as a full-fledged department. Overall, we made key contributions towards NUS’s vision of becoming a leading global university, shaping the future. CNM’s primary focus remains its teaching. We conducted the first stage of our pedagogically rigorous curriculum review to keep abreast of new developments in the sector and discipline. Following this review, students enjoyed a more streamlined learning experience. Modules were rebalanced and revised to enhance a mix of theoretical, industry, and practical classroom experiences. Our research leadership strengthens. We received multiple competitive grants from external funding bodies. We collaborated with—and had contributions from—leading international researchers. Even as I write this, CNM faculty are preparing more world-leading research publications for 2020 and beyond. I wish to take this opportunity to share with you some key highlights of 2019:
CNM Leaders Summit The CNM Leaders Summit was successfully relaunched in 2019. CNM was honoured to receive three eminent Guest Leaders over the year.
April 22: Mr. Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Education Communication in the Digital Era: Innovation, Adaptation, and Transformation
August 22: Mr. K. Shanmugam, Minister for Law and Home Affairs
October 18: Mr. Warren Fernandez, Editor-in-Chief of The Straits Times, and SPH’s English/Malay/Tamil Media Group Is There A Future for the Media Industry?
The CNM Leaders Summit gave our students meaningful and critical engagements with key political and industry leaders. These interactions are crucial. They are a glimpse into the thought processes and policies shaping the industries and communities which CNM graduates will enter as early-career media professionals, and as future leaders.
Commencement Commencement always ranks high on our list of memorable events. In July 2019, we feted—and bade fond farewell—to 11 Graduate students, 149 First Major students, 26 Second Major students, 23 CNM Minor students, and 1 IMD Minor student. In particular, we congratulate our student, Ms. Sabrina Meah, Valedictorian representing the CNM, Political Science, and Global Studies Class of 2019. Ms. Sabrina, in her commencement speech, looked back upon her undergraduate experience fondly and gratefully. “We take away more than just knowledge pertinent to our majors,” she said. “We take away crucial life skills and a sense of certainty and self-worth knowing that we can achieve greatness as long as we set our mind to it.” CNM is confident our graduates’ time at CNM and NUS has given them firm footing against the challenges ahead. We are proud of all of them. We wish them the very best.
Student Achievements In the Press
Two of our graduating students were featured in the media for their exemplary performance and achievements:
Sabrina Meah BERITA Mediacorp “2 pelajar Normal Akademik Melayu ini raih Ijazah Sarjana Muda dengan Kepujian Tertinggi NUS” (16 July 2019) Sabrina is the Valedictorian for the CNM, Political Science, and Global Studies Class of 2019. Sabrina was also awarded the Best Student in Communication Management Prize by CNM, and Outstanding Public Relations Student in the PRISM Awards 2019 by the Institute of Public Relations Singapore. Her year-end project researched fake news among Singaporean Boomers born between 1946 and 1965. It showed how fake news can be properly addressed in new media contexts.
Jasmine Goh The New Paper “NUS graduates overcome obstacles” (15 July 2019) Jasmine is the NUS Student Life Athlete of the Year (Distinction). Her other accolades include the NUS President Sports Award (Individual) for her contributions and leadership in the NUS Handball Women’s Team, and the NUS Sports Scholarship. Jasmine graduated in July 2019 with Highest Distinction in Communications and New Media.
Other CNM students were, at Faculty level, honoured for their academic achievements at the FASS Awards 2019.
PRIZE RECIPIENT
AMP Prize for Best Honours Thesis relevant to the Malay/Muslim Community in Singapore
Wahida binte Mohamed Taldiri Digital Islam: WhatsApp use amongst Middle Aged Muslim Women in Singapore
Special Book Prize Ryan Augustine Lim
China Daily Prize Brandon Lee Junhui Emily Eng Si Rui Teng Boon Song Jeremy Lew Jing Shan Wong Xin Ying Clara Anne Huang Yi-Xian Ng Wei Ting Sheryl Chia Xiuwen
#NUSBeyond Our alumna and current students fly the CNM banner high across Singapore. They are making waves in their areas of interest and expertise, and are an inspiration and encouragement to the Department.
Janelle Lee (Class of 2017) Janelle’s start-up, bantu.life, was in December awarded Social Enterprise Start-Up of the Year at the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award 2019. This includes a cash prize of S$50, 000. bantu.life’s award-winning innovations include Bantu Workspace. This cloud-based volunteer management platform collates volunteer data across projects and automates critical communications and reports. Here, Bantu Workspace frees up time for volunteer engagement and retention. Janelle is bantu.life’s co-founder, Chief Marketing, and Chief Product Officer.
Vanessa Ho Vanessa is a Star Search 2019 Finalist. As Recipient of November’s Star Search 2019 Samsung Galaxy Breakthrough Award, she juggles her undergraduate studies alongside her work as a DJ, model, and writer. Vanessa runs an Instagram account with over 74, 000 followers, and remains the most-followed Star Search Finalist.
Monica Baey Monica Baey brought #MeToo to NUS. In April, Monica shared Instagram stories about being the victim of voyeurism in NUS halls. She worked with advocacy groups to make her story go viral. Her actions led to the formation of the NUS Review Committee on Sexual Misconduct, and more on-campus protection for sexual assault survivors. Monica received the “Women of Courage” award from the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE).
Loo Jun Mun Jun Mun won Second Prize at the October hackathon “WHAT THE HACK! Mindful Drinking Edition”, organised by Asia Pacific Breweries Singapore. Jun Mun’s team created an app which restricts bar patrons from drinking excessively. This app requires patrons to perform a sobriety test, cueing bartenders to allow/disallow more drinks to the patron. Asia Pacific Breweries was impressed by the creativity of Jun Mun and his team, and sees the app as helping build a stronger and more responsible drinking community.
Staff Excellence As a leading department in Communication and Media Studies, CNM nurtures and attracts world-class academic teaching and research talents from the region and beyond. Teaching Our faculty and teaching assistants consistently demonstrate excellent teaching ability and capacity. This is reflected in the NUS AY 2018/2019 Teaching Awards.
Faculty Teaching Excellence Award for AY2018/2019
Asst. Prof. Alex Mitchell
Graduate Students Teaching Award Honour Roll
Bernadette Low Yan Fen
Graduate Students Teaching Award Dr. Satveer Kaur Aaron Ng Yi Kai Augustus Ceasar Destura Latosa Christopher Chia Wen Jie Farah binti Gulam Hussain Bawany Tiffany Neo Yu Han Wong Hei Ting
In January, CNM organised a teaching best practice session with the NUS Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning. In the spirit of lifelong learning, our faculty came together to explore new approaches to pedagogy.
New Faculty CNM welcomed 11 new faculty members to the Department in 2019, and will continue to welcome more in 2020. These new faculty members include:
Name Appointment Previous experience
Bertha Henson Associate Professor Journalist, Singapore Press Holdings
Dr. Michelle Ho Assistant Professor Postdoctoral Fellow, NUS
Dr. Kokil Jaidka Assistant Professor Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, NTU
Dr. Jinna Tay Senior Lecturer Lecturer, Monash University
Dr. Natalie Pang Senior Lecturer Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Policy Studies
Dr. Suwichit Chaidaroon Senior Lecturer Senior Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney
Dr. Shobha Avadhani Lecturer Instructor, NUS Centre for English Language Communication
Dr. Wu Shangyuan Lecturer Assistant Professor, NTU
Sarah-Tabea Sammel Instructor Award-winning director and producer; Film scholar
Prof. Chen Kuan-Hsing Visiting Professor Professor, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Dr. Alex Lambert Visiting Fellow Lecturer, Monash University
Our new faculty bring teaching and research excellence to strengthen the department. Professional Staff I am very proud to share that our entire administrative team was awarded the FASS Service Award. It is an exceedingly rare feat to have an entire team honoured in this way. Our administrative staff provide crucial and timely support for CNM faculty. Their sweep of the Service Awards testifies to their invaluable contributions and impeccable work ethic since they joined our department just the previous year.
Award Name Appointment
Outstanding Service Award Alicia Kong Wai Cheng Management Assistant Officer and Secretary to Head
Service Award Jasmin Tay Mei Hua Manager
Service Award Michael Basaldella Executive
Service Award Eng Yu Fan Executive
Enhancing Classroom Experiences CNM has, since the start of AY2019/2020, allocated financial resources towards a Classroom Teaching Fund. This fund enhances, through the efforts of module coordinators, many classroom experiences for CNM students—more excursions, improved A/V and computing equipment, and more guest speakers. For example:
- Students from our introductory NM1101E class were treated to a guest lecture by Dr. Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University, where she shared her expertise on social media and internet celebrity. She also discussed the influencer industry, as well as her research on an ongoing project on the weaponisation of pop culture content online. Students, during the Q&A, were able to field questions about influencers and micro-celebrities.
- NM1101E students also were given the opportunity to learn from Mr. Aloysius Yeo, Director of
Client Services at Convertium. Mr. Yeo spoke about the work of his digital agency, how to read client briefs, and shared tips on creating successful campaigns. During the Q&A, students fielded many questions about the qualities valued by the advertising industry. A long discussion on the July Mediacorp brownface advertisement followed.
- Students from NM3234 Leadership, Organisations and New Media participated in a workshop
with Mr. Joel Chua, a corporate trainer and psychotherapist who works with industry leaders on non-verbal communications. They also took part in a workshop-cum-lecture led by Emily Perkin,
the founder of Just Cause for Asia, a consultancy for not-for-profit organisations. She highlighted the complexities of the competing goals and objectives which underlie such organisations.
- NM4225 Design Fiction coordinators, Asst. Prof. Alex Mitchell and Ms. Ng Wen Lei, purchased
Arduino open-source microprocessors for their students. The Arduino microprocessors are an accessible hardware prototyping platform which lets students create functioning explorations of their design ideas; here the Classroom Teaching Fund allowed students to precisely evaluate different experimental interactions and artefacts.
Active Citizenry and Community Impact CNM is committed to the safety and development of the NUS community. We assisted the University to establish the NUS Victim Care Unit and produce the Campus Safety Video, “Safer Campus, Better Campus Life”. CNM is dedicated to the welfare and well-being of our students and faculty, and will continue to support improving systems and infrastructure to their benefit. CNM also took part in major conversations surrounding race in Singapore. In November, we co-organised “Regardless of Race: The Dialogue”, in which students and the public discussed the impact of social media on race relations. We were glad to host Singaporeans from all walks of life who are invested in strengthening racial and religious harmony. We continue to support these conversations through public events, academia, and in our classrooms.
Advancing Research Capabilities Grants Our academic talents are world-class researchers as well. This year, our faculty members have been awarded a number of grants to further their research interests, such as for Learning Generative and Parameterized Interactive Sequence Models with RNNs (A/P Lonce Wyse, Ministry of Education Tier 2 Grant), and Data Journalism in Asia (Dr. Wu Shangyuan, Ministry of Education Tier 1). Publications Our faculty members have also produced excellent research, many of which appear in top-tier journals worldwide. Asst. Prof. Taberez Neyazi Ahmed published the Cambridge University Press monograph Political Communication and Mobilization: The Hindi Media in India. Asst. Prof. Elmie Nekmat, Dr. Annisa R. Beta and Ms. Marie Angela M Ordonez published two articles in the top-ranked journal New Media and Society: “Commerce, Piety and Politics: Indonesian Young Muslim Women’s Groups as Religious Influencers”, and “‘Tipping Point’ in the SoS? Minority-supportive Opinion Climate Proportion and Perceived Hostility in Uncivil Online Discussion”. Events CNM organised 22 research talks in 2019. These research talks, with researchers and academics flying in from across the world to share their research expertise and findings, enriched the research experiences of CNM staff and students. Additionally, in August 2019, our graduate student community organised the inaugural Graduate Student Seminar Event. They excelled at it. Our faculty and staff also participated in public forums and lectures to share their research.
Guest Speaker at our Graduate Student Seminar,
Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, delivering his keynote speech.
Dr Elmie Nekmat sharing on social media trends and how social media can be used to improve classroom experiences for students at the Teachers’ Forum organized by Berita Harian Singapura. (See here)
Dr Shobha Avadhani speaking at “Hangout with ST” on how individuals can negotiate their relationship with technology and social media in an age of increasing digitization, especially in terms of cyber privacy. (See here)
Professor Rosalind Galt, King's College London, speaking on "Alluring Monsters: Queer Pontianaks in Film and Television"
Associate Professor Jonathan Corpus Ong, University of Massachusetts Amherst, speaking on “Ethnography in the Fake News Factory: The Perils and Possibilities of Empathy for the Disinformation Producer.”
Professor Chen Kuan-Hsing, Visiting Professor and Professor at Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, speaking on “Bandungism: Chen Yingzhen’s Third World.”
Industry Orientation A long-standing CNM strength is our orientation towards industry and practice. In 2019 we conducted a major revamp of our curriculum in consultation with the Industry Advisory Board. This board comprises experts and leaders from government, culture and arts, media, journalism, and public relations. Students enrolled in CNM modules are now exposed to an extensive spread of industry-relevant information and practices.
In 2019, 178 of our students embarked on the Compulsory Internship Programme, which links our students with industry employers. Overall, we received highly positive feedback from these employers. Their external validation affirms the quality of a CNM education. We continue to provide a rewarding internship experience for all our students. CNM also offered platforms for students to interact with industry practitioners. In collaboration with Mediacorp, CNM organised two sessions of the CNM-Mediacorp Seminar Series, offering students key insights into the past, present, and future of our media industry.
CNM-Mediacorp Seminar Series
Masterclass by Jayaprakash Bojan, NatGeo Nature Photographer of the Year 2017
The CNM Society also renewed its partnership with, and membership, in the Institute of Public Relations Singapore (IPRS). As an IPRS Student Chapter, CNM students have greater interaction and partnership opportunities with key industry players, as well as greater access to industry resources and events. These include socials, internships, and talks offered by IPRS and their constituent members. This partnership welcomes industry practitioners into our classrooms to share their experiences and best practices with our students.
14th CNM Society President, Quinn Ong, receiving a certificate of appreciation from IPRS.
Shaping the Future The CNM family is growing. We are all delighted with the progress and achievements made over the past one year. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all who have made 2019 such a memorable year. CMN continues to push the frontiers of teaching and research excellence as it cements its status as a world leader in communication and new media studies. Thank you for all your hard work this year. I wish you and your families a safe and enjoyable end of the year. Professor Audrey Yue Head of Department 20 December 2019
Points of Contact
DEPARTMENT SUPPORT UNIVERSITY/FACULTY SUPPORT
Undergraduate assistance: Eng Yu Fan, [email protected]
Graduate assistance:
Michael Basaldella, [email protected] Student Counsellors:
Rebecca Zhou, [email protected] Kastor Choo, [email protected] Sofia Morales, [email protected] Francesca Nathan, [email protected]
Student Support: Lynn Seah, [email protected]
Victim Care Unit:
6601 4000, [email protected] University Counselling Service:
6516 2376, [email protected]
Financial Aid www.nus.edu.sg/oam/financial-aid
