The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Monash University Malaysia and the University of Southampton Malaysia Campus launched the MyMentor initiative on 13 April 2015. The launch was officiated by Datuk Seri Haji Idris Jusoh, Minister of Education II, Malaysia at the Royale Chulan Hotel, Kuala Lumpur.
MyMentor, is a six-year initiative that is being supported by the Ministry of Education. MyMentor aims to develop post-doctoral research in Malaysia, in line with the National Higher Education Strategic Plan. The initiative is being led by The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in collaboration with the University of Southampton Malaysia Campus and Monash University Malaysia.
MyMentor is seeking to motivate and mentor experienced scientists, enabling them to publish high quality research papers in the leading international journals. This will also increase post-doctoral activity in Malaysia which will help towards the nation’s aspirations of becoming a developed nation by 2020. MyMentor helps address one of the areas raised in the Higher Education Blueprint (2015-2025) that was launched on 7 Apr 2015 by the Prime Minister. That is:
“The talent pool of PhD students and world-class researchers is still smaller than that of many countries. Expanding the number of PhD candidates and graduates will require addressing challenges in recruiting, hiring, and retaining researchers due to internal bureaucracy and slow processes, and improving the quality of postdoctoral and postgraduate programmes.”
The MyMentor chairman, Professor Graham Kendall, Vice-Provost at Nottingham said that “In order to ensure easy monitoring, MyMentor only has two Key Performance Indicators. It aims to train 230 public university post-doctoral staff over a six-year period and produce 350 high quality research papers”.
The entry requirements of the programme are competitive in order to attract the best early career researchers that Malaysia has to offer. In its inaugural year, MyMentor will only accept ten (10) mentor/mentee pairings. The
pairings will be increased in subsequent years to 25, 50, 70 and 75, totalling 230 pairings. Each pairing will last for two years, during which, they are expected to produce a minimum of one high quality research publication.
At the launch, attendees witnessed the launch of the MyMentor logo which was designed by Nour Salah Mohieldin Elwassimy from Monash University Malaysia as a result of a competition held to draw participations from the three partner universities.
Attendees were also invited to tweet about the launch. All tweets were captured on the MyMentor website and made visible to attendees. MyMentor can now be followed on @MyMentor15.
Among the attendees of at the launch were Professor Christine Ennew, CEO and Provost, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus; Professor Helen Bartlett President and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Monash University Malaysia, Professor John McBride, CEO of University of Southampton Malaysia Campus and Vice Chancellors at some of the leading universities in Malaysia.
More information on MyMentor is available on (website) and via email to deepa.kumari@nottingham.edu.my.
-ends-
The MyMentor project has been prepared for Malaysia’s Ministry of Education (MoE), following a series of communications with key staff. It will be delivered collaboratively by three international universities, all of which have branch campuses in Malaysia. The three institutions are all global top 100 universities, according to the QS World University Rankings 2014/2015 (Nottingham: 77; Southampton: 94; Monash:70). Nottingham and Southampton are both members of the UK’s Russell Group and Monash is a member of Australia’s Group of Eight.
The proposed mentoring program would pair a mentor and mentee for a period of 24 months. The mentor would come from either Nottingham, Southampton or Monash. Joint mentorship with the three institutions can be arranged if the research activity warranted expertise from these three institutions). The mentee would come from one of Malaysia’s public universities.
For more information, please contact Professor Graham Kendall on graham.kendall@nottingham.edu.my or Josephine Dionisappu on josephine.dionisappu@nottingham.edu.my, +6 (03) 8924 8746.
Posted on 14th April 2015