The Singapore Management University (Abbreviation: SMU; Chinese: 新加坡管理大学; Malay: Universiti Pengurusan Singapura; Tamil: ??????????? ??????? ?????????????) was officially incorporated on January 12, 2000, and is Singapore’s first private university funded by the government.
Presently, SMU is home to more than 6,000 students and comprises six schools offering undergraduate and graduate programmes in Business Management, Accountancy, Economics, Information Systems Management, Law and the Social Sciences. The University also has an Office of Research, a number of centres of excellence, and provides public and customised programmes for working professionals through its Office of Executive Education.
Singapore Management University
Established: 2000
Type: Private
Chancellor: Dr Richard Hu
President: Professor Howard Hunter
Provost: Professor Rajendra Srivastava
Faculty: 210
Undergraduates: 4529
Postgraduates: 213
Location: Bras Basah, Singapore
1°17′48″N 103°50′59″E? / ?1.29667°N 103.84972°E? / 1.29667; 103.84972Coordinates: 1°17′48″N 103°50′59″E? / ?1.29667°N 103.84972°E? / 1.29667; 103.84972
Campus: Urban
Colors: SMU Blue and SMU Gold
Website: www.smu.edu.sg
The idea of setting up a third university in Singapore was first mooted by the Singapore government in 1997.
Led by the newly appointed Chairman, Mr Ho Kwon Ping, a Singaporean business entrepreneur, the SMU task force determined that the new institution would follow the American university system featuring a more flexible broad-based education. Following a review of undergraduate business schools to serve as a model for SMU, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania emerged as the best candidate. Thus, the Wharton-SMU agreement was signed in February 1999 followed in June by the Wharton-SMU Research Center collaboration. In July 1999, Professor Janice Bellace, then Deputy Dean of the Wharton School, commenced a two-year term as SMU’s first president. Dr Tony Tan remarked at that time about the SMU-Wharton relationship: “We hope to be able to tap the expertise and support of Wharton’s faculty and extensive alumni network of public and private sector leaders, while offering Wharton a ‘beach-head in Asia’.”[citation needed]
In 2000, SMU made its first home at the former historic Raffles College on Evans Road at the edge of the Hwa Chong Institution Campus. The campus, first opened in 1929, had already been home to several institutions, before SMU. In 2001, SMU upgraded and occupied the main campus facilities, balancing the need to refit and refurbish it with facilities while preserving the heritage of colonial architecture. From 2001-2004, Professor Ronald Frank served as SMU’s second president and was succeeded by current president Professor Howard Hunter.
After five years at its Bukit Timah location, during which time the University saw the formation of four schools, the library and three centres of excellence as well as the Commencement of the first SMU graduates, SMU made a symbolic move to its new and permanent city campus in the Bugis-Bras Basah District. Since then, SMU has expanded further with the development of a Law school and the restructuring of the School of Economics and Social Sciences into two separate schools, the School of Economics and the School of Social Sciences.
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