Freshman Orientation Week at UM

Today marks my one month aniversary in Malaysia (can you believe I have been gone for one month? that probably makes you miss me even more). Now that I am settled in, I no longer carry my camera around with me everywhere I go. Unfortunately, this is freshman orientation week at UM and today would have been a great camera day.

The student dorms are known as Residential Colleges. I think that there are about fourteen of them and they are called 1st Residential College, 2nd Residential College, etc. I am not sure how the students are divided up among the colleges (more for me to figure out). During orientation week the freshmen from each college have a different outfit to wear (different colored shirts, hats, etc.). Today they had their big introductory meeting at the largest hall on campus where every student must have been given an umbrella (blue, red, or orange). When they came out of the hall (by the hundreds) they all marched around with their same colored shirts until they got to where they were going to eat lunch. I don't know if they told them they had to put up their umbrellas during the procession or whether everyone is so afraid that they might pick up one molecule of pigment in their skin if they ever are exposed to the sun (it is interesting how in the States fake tanning is a multibillion dollar industry whereas here it is skin whitening cream). But watching hundreds of kids moving all over the place with umbrellas was a sight to see (sorry no photos).

The team with the green shirts settled on the lawn right outside my office for their lunch. There was a group of "orange shirters" who must have been the upper classmen that were in charge of organizing the group. They made them all sit on the ground in straight lines before passing out their lunches (I think that some of the orange shirters were enjoying their power just a little too much). There is something in the news about a hazing death (here they call it "ragging") at a local military school so there have been many pronouncements that people should not abuse the freshmen too much.

The afternoon was spent with students meeting with people from their respective colleges and departments. I attended the orientation for the Institute of Biological Sciences and the Program in Ecology and Biodiversity and here is what I learned.

Institute of Biological Sciences
ISB is one of, if not, the biggest departments on campus. They have 89 academic staff, 130 administrative/support staff, 750 undergraduates, and 550 graduate students. ISB offers undergraduate degree programs in 8 areas- Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Ecology and Biodiversity, Genetics and Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Biohealth, and Environmental Science and Management. There are about 230 new students entering ISB. Most of these students were Malaysian, but there were about a dozen interntional students as well (the ones I talked to were from Turkey and Indonesia).

Program in Ecology and Biodiversity
PEB is one of the largest groups has 17 faculty members and there are about 30 new students entering the program.

The government has just approved new curriculum for universities across Malaysia. If students stay on track they can earn their Bachelors Degrees in three and a half years (unlike 5 for many students at Tech). The biggest difference that I saw between the curriculum at UM and the curricula at US schools, is that the Malaysia students take many fewer "liberal arts" courses so they can focus much more on the sciences. The curriculum is unforgiving, so students must take the required courses in the required order. The students all do an "industrial training: internship and all students are required to do a "senior research project" before graduating. They claim that students from PEB have the highest employment rate after graduation of all of the biology programs.

The speeches that people gave at the orientation were exactly as I was used to hearing from both the Honors College and Biology Department at Tech; "you are now entering the best place to learn in the world!". If that was true when I was at Tech and it is true here now then the only common denominator I can see is me!!! I hope Tech can muddle through a year without me.