USM Edu Community

THE Federal Government has allocated RM830mil for the development of the Accelerated Programme for Excellence (Apex) initiatives by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the allocation would be disbursed in stages under the Ninth and Tenth Malaysia Plans.

He said USM’s Apex status came with considerable educational, administrative and financial autonomy and a new system of governance at the university.

He said several strategic plans had been laid out for the university to accomplish its vision.

“I’m confident that USM will be able to achieve a world-class standard,” he said after launching USM’s Apex Transformation Plan, USM’s Student Entrepreneurial Development Initiatives Agenda and USM Students’ Development Policy at Dewan Budaya recently.

Mohamed Khaled said a National Apex Development Indicator (NADI) centre had been set up to monitor the transformation of USM into an Apex university.

During a five-year period, USM must be able to put itself among the world’s top 100 universities, he said.

He also said USM’s Apex University Implementation Plan’s progress report showed that the transformation plans were on track.

Earlier, Mohamed Khaled launched the renaming of USM’s Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia to the Centre for Global Archaeological Research.

He said the elevation of the centre to a global centre was due to USM’s recent findings of prehistoric human skeletal remains at Bukit Bunuh in Lenggong recently.

Last year, USM’s Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia director Associate Prof Dr Mokhtar Saidin said axes which were unearthed were evidence of the existence of homo erectus in South-East Asia.

Part of the findings were sent to the Japan Geochronology Lab in Tokyo for dating and the results showed that the axes were about 1.83 million years old.

Also present at both functions were USM board of directors chairman Tan Sri Ani Arope and vice-chancellor Tan Sri Prof Dzulkifli Abd Razak. - TheStar