Professor Shih Choon Fong, President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), is a dear friend of PKU. Apart from being supportive of PKU-hosted events, such as the Beijing Forum, Professor Shih also makes it a point to visit the campus often, keeping himself updated on the latest happenings. From September 20th to 23rd, 2012, he was in Beijing on a visit to PKU and warmly agreed to this interview.
Professor Shih’s career has largely been anchored in the academic world. He started off as a visiting associate professor of engineering with Brown University. Not long after rising to be professor at the school’s Division of Engineering, he returned to his home country, Singapore, as founding Director of the national-level Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. He would later serve a total of nine years at the helm of the National University of Singapore (NUS) as its Vice-Chancellor and then President, before heading to the Middle East to lead KAUST.
“An academic must always be young at heart!”
What exactly drives Professor Shih’s career in academics? “I like to work with ideas and young people,” Professor Shih offered unhesitatingly. Recounting how he was an adjunct professor while working at General Electric, his eyes lit up in the memory of the satisfaction he gained from supervising his first PhD student. He went on to describe how the questions asked by young people, however naive or obvious they may seem, force him to question the assumptions subconsciously made based on experience. In his opinion, an academic must not only engage the young, he must also be able to think like them. As the youthful-looking Professor Shih concluded, “An academic must always be young at heart!”
“When I started on my PhD at Harvard, I went to my advisor and asked ‘What should I do for my thesis?’ My professor looked surprised and replied, ‘No, you tell me what you want to do and we’ll work it out together. Find something that excites you and that you want to find out more about. If you know nothing about it, it’s alright, go to the library and read up on it. Come back and then we will discuss how to go about doing it,’” recounted Professor Shih as he described the forward-looking pedagogy he experienced firsthand in the US.
Having experienced the intellectual space offered by top US universities, Professor Shih returned to Singapore with the goal of bringing this spark and passion to NUS. He wanted to groom a generation of young thinkers who were not afraid to ask and to question, young people who would get the most out of their education and contribute significantly back to academia and society. Eventually, he would head to the Middle East and take up a similar challenge, that of leading KAUST to be a catalyst for Saudi Arabia’s transition into a knowledge-based economy.
“Higher education is a global activity.”
While everyone has a different definition of success, Professor Shih offered his insight on the importance of pursuing one’s passion and dream because “you only live once and you cannot re-trek your life because time cannot be regained.” He also identified the components behind success, “You have to be willing to try new things. You have to move out of your comfort zone.” One might say that his assuming the duties of founding president at KAUST is undoubtedly an apt display of this advice.
What then, is the success a university should strive towards? As an eminent scholar and a leader in education, Professor Shih’s repeated emphasis on the word “global” when describing higher education is noteworthy. Stressing the importance of a “global outlook” and for universities to strive towards being “global,” he explains that higher education is a global activity. It is about ideas in perspective, understanding and reconciling different perspectives. In this aspect, universities are inherently tasked with the duty of bringing about intellectual prosperity, where ideas are more enduring than any form of power.
“Go where the puck is going, not where it’s been.”
It is clear from speaking to Professor Shih that he is an energetic man, always on the move and constantly looking forward. In fact, this distinguished gentleman counts his once failure to realize the importance of the Chinese language as one of the biggest regrets in his life. When asked for his advice to the younger generation, he immediately recounted a snippet in Wayne Gretzky’s autobiography.
Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest ice hockey players in the world, once described how his father had drilled him on the fundamentals of the sport. The senior Gretzky would often ask his son, “Where do you skate?” “To where the puck is going, not where it’s been” was how the junior Gretzky was taught to reply.
Drawing a parallel, Professor Shih espoused that young people should be far-sighted enough to see beyond the present and search where future opportunities lie. Drawing on a mathematical example, he likened the West’s development to a function with a flattening gradient while the East’s to a function with a steep positive gradient. While the East is still behind the West in terms of development stage, the difference in their gradients is such that the East is bound to catch up. Hence, students should take a broader view when considering the future. In his own words, “Look west, but also look east.”
By Lim Ruo Shuang
