Serdang, 15 February- Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Dr. Mohd Roslan Sulaiman, has outlined 11 aspirations in the Vice-Chancellor's Narrative 2022 and urged all UPM staff and students to embrace and work towards achieving the aspirations. He also expressed his hope that everyone should face 2022 and the challenges with a bolder spirit and courage.

The aspirations are to lead in agriculture and become a development reference centre, to produce students as good citizens, to become a smart campus, to uphold research for the nation, to lead university mission for the community, to promote UPM globally, to maintain UPM's reputation as the most sustainable university, to care immensely and appreciate service, to intensify campus well-being initiatives, to sustain university funding, and to engage alumni for university sustainability.

According to him, this year's Vice-Chancellor's Narrative is an extension of last year's narrative which called upon UPM community to echo the call of al-Falah from the tower of knowledge and that it needs to be put into action and implemented this year.

"I am urging the UPM community—staff and students to ‘take the steps together towards al-Falah’. Let us together roll up our sleeves to fulfil the hopes of the community that we bear on our shoulders," he said during his speech at the Vice-Chancellor's Narrative 2022 ceremony here.

He said this year, UPM will focus on the programmes planned by the Centres of Responsibility (CORs) that support the achievement of the targets set in the UPM Strategic Plan 2021-2025, in particular, the high-tech agriculture, smart campus digitisation, and programmes that contribute to the sustainability of the established institution.

Prof. Dr. Mohd Roslan said the aspiration to lead in agriculture and become a development reference centre is part of the implementation of agricultural mechanisation and application of smart approach to agricultural technology with the use of drones for agricultural inputs (pesticides, fertilizers or seeds), as well as the development of mobile application for paddy management with the use of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) map.

Through the aspiration to produce students as good citizens, UPM will strive to strengthen political literacy among students through various methods and approaches such as by emphasising the formation of common values ​​based on the core values ​​of the university when practising political freedom among students.

The aspiration to realise a smart campus aims to strengthen the digitisation of the campus since it is the best support system for UPM to grow as an organisation. Prof. Dr. Mohd Roslan also launched the Putra®Staf Smart Mobile Apps application developed by the Information and Communication Development Centre (iDEC).

The aspiration to uphold research for the nation, among others, will introduce entrepreneurial attributes among UPM researchers to allow them to focus fully on managing the start-ups registered as these provide a source of income/revenues for the university. This is also an effort to strengthen commercialisation and innovation in UPM.

Putra Science Park is the institution responsible for managing and commercialising UPM's intellectual property expressed full support of the aspirations outlined by the Vice-Chancellor of UPM. In this exhibition session, PSP showcased several innovations such as Postbiotic, Poultry Vaccine and Fish Vaccine, Livestock Food to strengthen food security. 

Date of Input: 28/02/2023 | Updated: 28/02/2023 | aishah