March 17, 2014, by Adrian Mateo

Branching Out

As part of its closing act, the ‘Global Citizen Workshop 2014’ ended with a small(er) round-table discussion before waving adieu to the many delegates that had attended over the past few days. Issues of branch campuses, internationalisation of both the curriculum and the experience were debated including an insight into the difficulties of collaborating research and teaching styles across the campuses. Having attended the previous two days, in University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) and KL respectively, there was a surreal comfort in seeing familiar faces again – and their various, differing perspectives. In such a cosy setting, everyone easily had the chance to speak: whether it was the presenters – including the Vice Provost – or the audience which consisted of academics from other universities, delegates who had chosen to stay out of interest … or us, the students.

Vice-Provost for Research & Knowledge Transfer at UNMC, Graham Kendall’s segment on “Building a Research Intensive International Branch Campus: Lessons from the Nottingham Experience” was particularly interesting for an aspiring academic as it put into perspective the pressures that face lecturers and the administration. We learned that students aren’t the only ones with homework and academic deadlines since lecturers must fulfil research quotas and publish as many articles of quality as they can. Furthermore, it seems institutions must conform to all sorts of standards and produce an overwhelming number of articles in order to be accredited as a research university, making it appear to be a truly daunting task. From a student’s perspective we feel that accreditation and quantity of articles published are not important if quality is sacrificed in regards to teaching and research.

In addition, when we were first approached to write this reflective post, our initial thoughts were ‘Cannot, lah!’ – a throwback to its frequent use in the everyday, colloquial Malaysian English that we have begun to adopt as well as its persistent appearance in Stephen Doughty’s (Vice-Provost for Teaching & Learning at UNMC) presentation ‘Things the VC Never Told Me (or Never Knew)’. As final-year students, the subtitle ‘Internationalising the Curriculum and QA on the ground’ held little appeal. Yet, as Stephen began to outline the many things he had to say ‘Cannot!’ to – from the number of library books per student to the amount of space required for accommodation – we found ourselves intrigued by how far the University had initially attempted to transplant the ‘UK’ experience in Malaysia. Of particular interest was how we were repeatedly questioned about how ‘British’ we felt the curriculum or the lifestyle was here – yet, as a British and a Canadian student, neither of us had actually expected or even desired to experience a replica of the UK. Moreover, in our time in Malaysia, we’ve both found that this a point of view other students also share – whilst the UoN brand, and its degree accreditation, are highly important we feel that students are highly self-aware of the international nature of the campus lifestyle here and, actually, love it!

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