National Council of Professors

1. In 2004 the faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia established a Council of Professors, a committee under the faculty. The main objective had been to create an academic forum where serious academic matters are presented and discussed by the learned men and women. Some of these agendas were not able to be discussed at the normal faculty meetings due to lack of time.

2. Since then we had discussed the university rankings, internationalisation of university, journals of high impact factor, international networking, commercialisation of research, what is a research university, etc. The forum had been productive because great minds and brains think alike some times but not all the times.

3. Tomorrow Prof. R Wickineswari of the School of the Environment and Natural Resources is going to table a presentation on, "introgressive rice" the bread and butter of her academic research which has been supported very well by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Malaysia.

4. This year on 31st March the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education established the National Council of professors with Prof. Emer. Dato' Dr. Zakri A. Hamid as her first Chairman. A number of clusters were also established to group some outstanding professors in various disciplines to give inputs to the government. Honestly I don't know how many professors are there in the country. My perception is that there are a few types of professors in Malaysia; there are founding professors, there are clinical professors, there are teaching professors and there are research professors. I am not sure whether United Kingdom has these types of professors!

5. A professor, to me is simply who has been a good teacher, teaching both the under- and post-graduate courses; who has been supervising graduate students, preferably PhD candidates; who has been carrying out good research and publish many papers in journals; who has contributed significantly to the scientific community, societies and governments; who is knowledgeable in his/her chosen discipline; presenting keynote and plenary addresses and above all the role model for the aspiring lecturers. The above characteristics differentiate professors from politicians, business people, professional practitioners and the public at large.