PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

The International Nite of our Club, featuring Mexican extravaganza, will be held on Friday, 6th March at Sheraton Subang. It will be evening full of fun, music and songs. And of course, the Mexican costumes of senora and senorita wearing poncho and sombrero. We need to make this a successful evening event. Please come and participate. Our International Nites have always been significant events. I must thank PP Goh Seng Chuan and PP Chris Ng for organizing it.

Please remember February is World Understanding Month. We need to further good will in our international community.

Let us try to be Mexican for the evening. To keep you informed of Mexico, here’s some information about Mexico.

So here we are. We now have some bits and pieces of information about Mexico to start your conversation. 

P.S. The Ambassador of Mexico's name is Mr Jorge Alberto Lozoya.

A PhD holder does not mean that he is a good teacher. Neither does it convey a message that he is an excellent researcher. But when an academic has that qualification, he is generally deemed to have ‘something’ identified with academia. Also, when a university has a number of PhDs, it is a selling point for the university in terms of prestige. Parents and students today look for this in academic staff.

Why is this happening to UM? By now, most of the academic should have their 3rd degree. As an academic staff for a number of years in UM, I had observed that the PhD candidates on scholarship were not properly vetted before they were given places. First of all, they did not have the passion for academia. They just wanted a PhD for various reasons. Because of this, they were unable to identify their research interest. They lacked focus. They could not do something that could be called ‘pioneering’ in terms of research. So the result was that they failed to graduate. Failure was very rampant in all faculties. When they returned, their academic position and job remained intact even without the PhD. There were not dealt with in terms of disciplinary action when thousands of ringgit had been spent on them. To add to this pathetic situation, they had no feelings of remorse.

It is fair to state that some PhD scholars graduated but they took an usually long time to do so. Some took as long as 6 years. According to statistics, UM scholars take 4.8 years to complete, University of Melbourne 3.65 years and Queensland University 3.5 years.

A committee at every faculty must be set up to look into the selection of PhD scholars. This should not be left to the deans.

During my time, there was an age requirement for applicants for PhD scholarships. When you are 40 or there about, you are frowned upon. So some of us had no choice but to do their PhD part-time with no scholarships or any subsistence allowance. Ironically, statistics during that time showed that they graduated and also in shorter time. I did mine in 3 years and 3 months and this record, it seems still stands in my faculty despite a heavy teaching workload and the administrative duties as the head of a department.

Things have got to change for the better in UM and they have to be real soon.

Please note that our regular weekly meeting on Tuesday, 03 Mar 09 has been rescheduled to Friday, 06 Mar 09 at Subang Sheraton Hotel, Subang Jaya, at 8pm.

On the same night our Mexican Night will be held

There are many types of awards. In terms of projects, the RI Significant Achievement Award and the Best Project in the 5 Avenue of Services seem to be the Club’s focus. The deadline for the awards is 28th February. The criteria for the award are outlined below:

The speaker also talked about the award for the best bulletin. The criteria will be regularity, club meetings records, club news, RI news, Rotary information, membership development and editorial.

Thank you Seng Chuan for the information.