Diversity begets Unity

Today, 13th January 2009 the Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia celebrated her 10th anniversary with pomps and shade of purple. It was on 19th July 1999 that the faculty was officially formed from a process of academic restructuring that lasted for about 1.5 years. In 1996 there were three faculties of science at the main campus in Bangi, namely, the Faculty of Life Sciences, the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences. The three were functioning very well academically. With the Faculty of Natural Resources Sciences moving from Kota Kinabalu to Bangi, it made the existing science faculties redundant. Hence, the Chancellory felt it was a good opportunity to restructure the four faculties to make them more relevant and competitive. Furthermore, in that decade the private holdings and corporations were undergoing restructuring and so were many public universities in Australia, United Kingdom and USA.
We started with diverse, faculties, academics and programmes as inherited from the old schools - a great diversity of curricula and departments. And we were united into a mega-faculty with dreams and aspirations of becoming one of the leading faculty of science in the country and the region. This year we embarked on self-assesment and evaluation to find out whether we were able to grow on our presumed strength or we just continue to fucntion where we were. Many programmes were arranged for the whole year beginning with the launching of the celebration this morning by the VC Dato' Prof. Dr. Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Sahabudin, and tonight we are going to have the faculty dinner. Happy anniversary FST