Gwangju International Center

Taking an extra mile...because we care!

Speaker : Prof. Rohizani Yaakub (Malaysian)

Review writter: Su-jin Yu

Editor: Nguyen Thi Le Hoa

Today's speaker came from Malaysia for Chonnam National University's summer session. I was also taking class in summer session, so I was really glad to hear and see her speech.

She introduced her University Sains Malaysia. This school has many outstanding aspects. It was selected as one of the Research intensified university, and awarded an "APEX University" which means Accelerated Program of Excellent. Anyway, before talking about her topic, she showed us one video clip that made for sightseeing. Through this video clip, we thought that Malaysia is a very fun place, and people there always seem to be happy.

However, it was not true. She talked about rural area especially about education system. Sabah is second biggest city in Malaysia, but the city's education system is poor. Speaker was in InSPIRE program which is abbreviation of Integrated Program Instruction for Rural Environment. Therefore, she went to Sabah through this program and saw many sad scenes. Students were studying in poor surroundings, and infrastructure, but they had passion for learning and always had bright faces. Her team found challenges of internal factors which administration, existing resources, problems and shortcomings in existing curriculum. Also the team found challenges of external factors which are community expectations, assumptions, and values nature of subject and support systems. Her team think that we should also give opportunity to study for rural area students, because they are in the bottom of pyramid.

Speaker seems like really like her job and has passion. When she talked, I can see her smile and enjoying it through talk. I think that she also grew up in rural area, so she want to help students more.

Western cultures