Long Service and Excellence Awards

The Long Service and Excellence Awards recipients

UTAR Staff Long Service and Excellence Awards was held on 17 May 2016 at UTAR Multi-purpose Hall (MPH). The purpose of this event was to honour the contributions and unconditional dedication of staff who have served UTAR for more than ten years.

Prof Chuah giving his speech

Prof Chuah in his speech mentioned that, “UTAR is all about the staff, their dedication and commitment for the university and its students. I always think that for any organisation, particularly within a university, it is not so much about the syllabus, but is eventually about the capability of the staff. With this I would like to thank all the Long Service Award recipients for your ultimate dedication and commitment towards UTAR. I am very sure that all of you have worked very hard, but I would like to urge all of you to work smart and to be efficient. If a person can only perform if he has been given everything under the sun, he is just a mediocre person, but if a person can perform with constraints then he or she is a real achiever. I urge all of you to think out of the box and by this, to know which box you are in first. Competition will always be there and there is no guarantee in life, so we have to continuously improve ourselves to stand out, be more efficient and effective.”

Prof Chuah further iterated, “A university is not just a teaching college, as teaching is just the dissemination of knowledge. The university also has a duty to continuously create knowledge by conducting research that have high impact to the society as a whole. The six guiding principles in UTAR, which are Virtue and Morality, Knowledge and Intellect, Physical and Mental health, Sociality and Humanitarianism, Aesthetics and Harmony, and Creativity and Innovation, must be used to preserve our harmonious working environment and lift UTAR to greater heights.”

Awards and gifts

All the long service award recipients were then invited onto the stage to receive their award and gift presented by Prof Chuah himself as a token of appreciation.

“UTAR provides the ideal environment, motivation, and support towards intellectual property development and research commercialisation efforts. I would say it can be exciting but taking caution with public disclosure is important when aiming for patent filing,” said Dr Wong Mee Chu who was one of the recipients of the Research Excellence Award 2015.

S. Poongothai from the Centre for Extension Education mentioned, “Throughout the years of working at UTAR, I have picked up English and Bahasa Melayu and this helps me in improving myself so that I can serve UTAR better.”

“I love my job as I am very energetic and passionate about my work which enables me to move around,” said Tahrin bin Uda Abdul Rahman from the Department of General Services.

Dr Lim Eng Hock from the Faculty of Engineering and Science and a recipient of the Research Excellence Award 2015 said, “It is important to note that regardless of the constraints we may face, we must find a way out.  We must try our best to do high-impact research and actively seek for supporting funds that enable UTAR to march forward to its goal to become a global university of educational excellence with transformative societal impact which strives for excellence in research. I believe that good researchers will always want to stretch their mind to propel it further so that it does not stay at the same dimension all the time. Also, we need to always look beyond the present to remain relevant to the industries.”

During the event, UTAR also announced that the Centre for Communication Systems and Networks (CSSN) had been awarded the UTAR Research Centre Excellence Award 2015 that provides a research grant amounting to RM100,000. The CCSN focuses on telecommunications research such as broadband network technologies and management, wired and wireless internetworking systems, communication theory and applications, and applied electromagnetics. It is a place that has gathered researchers from all walks of life, providing them with a hotbed to do multi-disciplinary research. To date, the centre has 14 researchers who have actively worked around the clock to secure external grants amounting to more than seven million ringgit, as well as publishing more than 40 peer-reviewed journal papers, one monograph, four book chapters, and participating in many conferences.

Prof Chuah presenting the award to Dr Lim accompanied by Prof Ir Dr Lee Sze Wei

The event ended with an appreciation lunch to thank all the staff who have worked hard in serving the university.

The buffet spread