UC’s Malaysian alumni most active and engaged
KUCHING: The Malaysian alumni of University of Canterbury ( UC) are among the most active and engaged of all their alumni worldwide.
UC deputy vice- chancellor (Academic) Dr C Hamish Cochrane said active chapters such as the UC Alumni Kuching Chapter are instrumental in matters such as providing scholarships to send Kuching students for tertiary education in Christchurch, New Zealand.
“The student you are currently supporting, Naomi Siva, is undertaking a Bachelor of Speech and Language Pathology.
“While I am prohibited from saying how well she is doing, I am smiling,” he said at the Kuching Chapter alumni dinner on Monday.
Cochrane added that meeting the alumni during his visit to Miri, Sibu and Kuching reinforced the strong link between New Zealand and Sarawak.
Kuching was his last stop in Malaysia.
Prior to Sarawak, Cochrane and his team called on their alumni in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
During his visit, Cochrane updated alumni members on the progress of their NZ$ 1.1 billion ( RM3.3 billion) expansion of the university’s facilities, particularly the Science, Engineering and Education buildings.
“We have exciting new initiatives in agriculture and agribusiness, including a refreshed and much closer relationship with Lincoln University.
“We also have some new exciting initiatives around rocketry and the first commercial satellite service provided by a start- up company called Rocket Lab – a commercial company launching satellites into space from the East Cape of North Island.”
Cochrane added that while in Miri, he met an alumni member who studied at UC in the 1960’s and validated an algorithm his professor developed to predict the best ellipse for a rocket to get to the moon.
“The algorithm was confirmed and on July 20, 1969, humans landed on the moon – thanks in small part to the work of a UC PhD student from Malaysia.”
Around 70 alumni attended the dinner, including Kuching Chapter chairman Alex KK Ting.