2002 ~ 2006 |
THE PIONEERS
Other less visible highlights included supporting
Jayeen Hong as the first MUM Communication
student to complete an international exchange to
the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 2002; and also
overseeing the first student exchanges from Australia
to Malaysia. Malaysian students regularly transferred
to Australia and in 2003, two young men, Jordan and
Michael (whose surnames escape me now!) admirably
pioneered the reverse transfer. Another happy memory
is the inter-varsity games in which, along with around
twenty other of our slightly-built MUM staff, we won
the women’s Tug-of-War against a burly team from
a neighbouring university! I do not remember the
opposing university but recall our trepidation and
determination, and the joy as we walked away
the champions!
16
On a personal note, I made some lifelong friends
in KL, and found the best singing teacher ever,
Ng Ju Voon, who relieved Bang Hean as Music tutor
at MUM. I have fond memories of book-shopping
in Brickfields, and Bloomsday readings at Silverfish
Books in Bangsar, and late-night jazz at the city haunt,
‘No Black Tie’, and getaways in Penang, Malacca,
and beautiful Sabah. But the enduring pleasures were
in settling in and finding ways around the city and
suburbs of KL and becoming a reliable guide for
the many visitors entertained. If I might use the
lovely Malay expression, Sunway became my
‘Balik Kampung’ for those three years.
“But what I mainly offer is this sense of the process:
what I call the long revolution” (Williams 1992/1961,
355). Williams’s sense of processes as elements
of larger spheres of change is a lasting and fitting
reflection here. By the time I departed from MUM in
2004, winds of change were afoot with the advance of
plans for the new campus and medical school gaining
steam under the PVC Professor Merilyn Liddell.
Other Australian universities had entered the Malaysian
field, notably Curtin and Swinbourne, both in East
Malaysia. Monash Communication went on to become
SASS, a benchmark center for Arts learning in the
Asian region ten years on. Distantly, Neil Hanley’s
legacy (he sadly passed away merely a couple of
years after departing MUM) is the root of the thriving
SASS program of today, which I and many colleagues
were fortunate to tend in its formative stages.
Selamat Tahniah SASS, and long and creatively may
you prosper!
Dr Allison Craven is Associate Professor at James
Cook University, Australia. She was Communications
Coordinator at Monash University Malaysia from
2001 to 2004.