NUS College (NUSC), the honours college of the National University of Singapore (NUS), has introduced two new professorships: the Tan Chorh Chuan Professorship and the Richard C Levin Professorship. These positions honor the contributions of two esteemed academic leaders who have profoundly impacted pedagogy, knowledge advancement, and critical thinking. Named after former NUS President Prof. Tan and former Yale University President Prof. Levin, these professorships are the inaugural ones at NUSC, celebrating their visionary leadership and commitment to innovative education.
In announcing the new professorships, NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said, “These professorships recognize two outstanding and visionary academic leaders – Prof Tan and Prof Levin – for their unwavering commitment to academic excellence and deep passion for driving innovation, inspiring students, and advancing knowledge to solve the problems of tomorrow. Their legacies will continue to influence and shape the future of NUS College”.
Professor Simon Chesterman, Dean of NUSC, said, “This initiative celebrates the values that Rick and Chorh Chuan stand for and will enable like-minded leading educators to teach at NUS College. The professorships will support the cross-appointment of existing NUS faculty or attract visiting professors so that we can bring in the very best educators from NUS or around the world to teach at NUS College”.
Prof. Tan served as President of NUS from 2008 to 2017, while Prof. Levin was President of Yale University from 1993 to 2013. Both will continue their roles as governing board members of Yale-NUS College. During his presidency at NUS, Prof. Tan spearheaded transformative initiatives and innovative educational models that elevated NUS to global recognition as Asia’s top university and one of the world’s leading institutions. Under his leadership, the pace of development and new initiatives quickened, including the establishment of NUS University Town, the School of Continuing and Lifelong Education, several Research Centres of Excellence, and the Smart Nation Research Cluster.
He discovered a like-minded visionary in Yale’s then-President Prof. Levin, who is recognized for enhancing academic standards at Yale and leading internationalization efforts to elevate it to a global university. In 2009, Prof. Levin accepted Prof. Tan’s invitation to co-found Singapore’s first liberal arts and sciences college, Yale-NUS College. This initiative, along with the University Scholars Programme, laid the groundwork for NUSC.
Prof Tan said, “The creation of the named professorships is a signal honour, for which I am most grateful. I envision that the holders of these Professorships can play a valuable role in extending the trailblazing work of Yale-NUS College, in innovating and transforming the liberal arts educational model to inspire and inform the continuing transformation of education in NUS and beyond”.
Prof Levin said, “I am deeply grateful that NUS has chosen to honour the contributions of Yale-NUS College to the development of liberal arts education in Singapore by establishing chairs in the names of the College’s co-founders. I hope that the holders of these chairs will strive, in the spirit of the College, to teach open-minded global citizens, driven by curiosity and love of learning, to appreciate the perspectives of multiple disciplines and the values and institutions of civilisations in other times and other places”.
