The Anthropology major teaches students to question what it means to be human by exploring as wide a range of human experience as possible. A key approach is to instill in our students an appreciation of the diversity of human social and cultural life across time and space. In classes, we investigate the lived experience people have of their society, exploring differences of language and culture, gender and sexuality, social class, caste, race, ethnicity, religion and locality. As anthropologists frequently focus on life among people who are geographically and socially marginalised, themes of power and powerlessness, identity and otherness, belonging and migration are central to the Anthropology major.

Although Yale-NUS College was not the first institution to offer courses in Anthropology (e.g. the Department of Sociology at NUS has offered courses for many decades), it is the first institution to have a full-fledged, standalone Anthropology program. In the early years of the major, the faculty comprised primarily of short-term visitors from universities in North America. They included Marcia Inhorn, Nicole Constable, Steve Ferzacca, Erik Harms, and John and Jean Comaroff, some of whom also served as Heads of Studies. The major was able to attract significant student interest, with several dozens of students majoring and minoring in it each year. This is extraordinary given that Anthropology was (and remains) a relatively unknown field in Singapore, which suggested that the major offered something very exciting to students who were willing to take the risk and explore something that their parents might not understand.

During the College’s final years, the faculty comprised of Zachary Howlett, Stuart Strange, Gabriele Koch, Neena Mahadev, Lau Ting Hui, and Nur Amali Ibrahim.

Emphasis on conducting original research:

In all Anthropology courses, students are taught how to conduct ethnography, which is Anthropology’s signature research methodology. Some of the skills they acquire include learning how to carry out participant-observation, to conduct interviews, to document oral histories, to analyse various types of textual materials (from newspapers reports to governmental policies, social media posts, etc.), and to formulate an interpretation of the data collected. Additionally, many students are also hired by the faculty to become research assistants. Students bring all these skills together in their capstone project, where they will conduct a year-long original research project. Importantly, the research strengths of Anthropology students explain why many of them become qualitative researchers (in academic, medical, governmental, and corporate settings) after graduation.

Experiential learning:

As part of our courses, faculty will often take students to field trips to various locations around Singapore. Some of the places where students have visited in recent years include:

• Little India (for Borders and Boundaries course)
• Art Science Museum (for Body andSociety)
• Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (for Religion and the Media Turn)
• MacRitchie Reservoir (for Multispecies Ethnography)
• Tech Able, an organization supplying assistive technology for the disabled (for Medical Anthropology)

Emphasis on appreciating diversity and difference:

Anthropology students will learn to offer ethnographically and historically grounded descriptions of the human condition; to provide concrete examples of alternative ways of being human; and, upon that basis, to question what it means to be human in the world. Such awareness can lead to new kinds of civic engagement around the world and novel modes of moral and ethical reasoning.

Empathy for the less privileged in society:

In our courses, students learn about the operations of power in the world—from economic power to the power of the state, geopolitical relations, the relations between the different genders and sexes, and how these different forms of power overlap with one another. They learn to analyse how power works, through particular historical and cultural contexts, to place certain people at the margins of society.

A culture of collaboration and mutual help:

Within and outside the classroom, the Anthropology major emphasises the importance of developing a culture of collaboration and mutual. In the classes, our faculty utilise techniques like group discussions and peer reviews to encourage students to learn how to think together. Our capstone students are encouraged to organise themselves in writing groups where they can brainstorm ideas and keep one another accountable to their writing schedules. We also organise regular parties that act as a social glue and help to foster collegiality.

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Arts and Humanities has attracted an overwhelming number of major and minor students over the years. As with any major in the college, our major has evolved and changed over time, especially with the kind of faculty we have had in the program. In our beginning years, we had a strong music practice and music history component, as well as four art historians teaching a wide range of topics from Western, Modern, and Asian art. Our arts practice courses have also ranged from drawing, photography, installation, and digital media. Our Theatre programme has also developed over the years. The curriculum is practice-based, with courses in Acting, Directing, and Theatre-Making, incorporating scripts and training from global traditions. The programme also produces an annual production, training workshops led by professional artists, and presents prominent practitioners and scholars as Guest Speakers. The writing track faculty in conjunction with the Writer’s Centre have provided courses in creative fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, journalism and more and has guided many future authors during our years.

Some of the difficulties specific to our major has been the lack of clarity in career paths after graduation. As our major encompasses such a large range of skills and interests, it was difficult for students to envision their paths after graduation. We have tried to engage our alumni from various sectors and pathways so that current students could have an idea of the variety of possibilities that would be open to them.

We have a wide range of teaching methods in our major, reflecting the variety and breadth of what the Arts and Humanities encompasses. We have practice-based courses, theoretical and historical courses, and everything in between. Our courses take place in the classroom, museums and galleries, art studios, black box theatre, and outside in nature.

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The Economics major at Yale-NUS College was designed with a vision to provide a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of economic principles, theories, and methods, while fostering critical thinking, analytical skills, and a deep appreciation of global and interdisciplinary perspectives. The purpose of the major was to equip students with the tools necessary to analyze and address complex economic issues, both theoretical and practical, and to prepare them for diverse careers in academia, public policy, business, and beyond.

The major aimed to cultivate students' abilities to understand and interpret data, build and test economic models, and apply economic reasoning to real-world problems. By integrating liberal arts education principles, the Economics major sought to develop well-rounded individuals who could think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, and engage ethically with the world around them.

The vision for the Environmental Studies major was to educate future interdisciplinary, forward looking, critical, and reflexive environmental scholars, practitioners, advocates, changemakers, and citizens of the world. It was purposely designed to be distinct from the environmental studies programmes of Yale University and the National University of Singapore, offering a balance of breadth and depth of knowledge, skills and experiences that cut across and integrate the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The Environmental Studies major at Yale-NUS College was meant to deviate from the dominance of environmental science and studies programmes around the world that emphasise technocratic and managerial solutions. While the programme envisioned students to be stewards of sustainability, it also aimed to train them to become circumspect of solutions that claim to resolve the world’s knottiest socio-ecological problems. Its faculty hoped that the graduates of the programme will not only have the right set of analytical skills and critical lens, but also the determination to weather the tides of a highly uncertain and turbulent future and the commitment to search for meaningful solutions with the right dose of reflexivity and humility.

Interview with founding Head of Studies (Environmental Studies) (2013–2022), Professor Michael Maniates

Interview with Head of Studies (Environmental Studies) (2022–2025), Professor Marvin Joseph Montefrio

Interdisciplinary
Environmental Studies was the only major in the college that drew its curriculum on all three divisions: Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Natural Sciences. It was also the only major that allowed students to pursue a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree. Students were offered a diverse suite of foundational and elective courses that fall in any of these divisions, with several integrating two or more. The gateway course, Introduction to Environmental Studies, was a prime example of a course that integrates the social sciences, humanities, and the natural sciences. Students learned about the Earth’s biogeochemical systems alongside the politics of sustainability and the ethics of human-environment relations. Advanced courses such as Ecological Economics and Singapore’s Biodiversity were excellent examples of interdisciplinarity too. In Ecological Economics, students learned about the history of economics, the fundamental tenets of mainstream economics, the laws of thermodynamics, the philosophy of modern science, and the complexities of human decision-making behaviours. In Singapore’s Biodiversity, two professors—Anthony Medrano (an environmental historian) and Eunice Tan (a biologist)—co-taught a course that brought together ecology and environmental humanities.

Moreover, students had the autonomy to design their own area of specialisation by curating foundational and advanced courses offered in the Environmental Studies programme and beyond. Because of this flexibility, students were able to bring together different fields and disciplines across divisions. Many of our students successfully designed areas of specialisation and pursued capstone projects that cut across two or three divisions. For example, one student specialised in sustainable agriculture and took courses in environmental literature, food ecology, and environmental politics. She also pursued a capstone project that employed a rigorous social science research with an accompanying documentary.

In spite of the purposeful design of the Environmental Studies curriculum to ensure interdisciplinarity, achieving it was not easy at the outset. Eventually however, students and faculty learned to be open and became entrepreneurial enough to explore interdisciplinary initiatives on their own.

Normative and Critical Yet Nuanced
The field of environmental studies is problem-driven, i.e., much of its scholarship is premised on finding the solutions to knotty socio-ecological issues. The Environmental Studies major at Yale-NUS College also attracted students who were driven to action; many of them organised and became key actors of environmental initiatives and advocacy groups on campus and beyond. Some of the notable initiatives were I’deco (the student organisation in Yale-NUS College committed to environmental action), Chili Padi Academy (an I’deco initiative that educates future young environmental leaders in the Southeast Asian region), GreenCheck (an organisation that supports climate-action groups around the world), Fossil-Free NUS, and the Singapore Climate Rally. Because of the nature of the discipline and the students that the programme attracted, quite a few of the courses offered were action-based and normatively driven (e.g., Another World is Possible: Ecotopian Visions; Environmental Movements: Past, Present and Future; China’s Energy and Environmental Sustainability; Food and Sustainability). Even courses that were highly theoretical, such as Social Theory and the Environment and Ecological Economics, had normative and action components in them. There was even a moment when the programme incorporated a required upper-level module—Applied Environmental Research—that provided students with the training and experience to conduct environmental research with normative and action goals in a collaborative setting.

Many courses, particularly in the social sciences and the humanities, were also fundamentally critical. While the programme advocates for sustainable living and action, it was also critical of ideas and solutions that did not sufficiently tackle systemic and structural issues. This boded well with the students’ inclination to organise and participate in bolder advocacies and initiatives that endeavour to address the root of socio-ecological problems. The critical scholarship in the programme was balanced with nuance; political economic ideologies, for example, were tempered by the pragmatism of more managerial perspectives. Thus, Environmental Studies students were also trained to be reflexive and critical of their own perspectives.

Experiential
One characteristic of Environmental Studies courses that students appreciated the most was the attention to experiential learning. Environmental Studies courses had the reputation of having many field trips and unique activities. Courses like Asia’s Edible Oceans and the Ecology of Food bring students to many sites of interest in Singapore, some of which unfamiliar to Singaporean students. Courses like Urban Agriculture and Food Sustainability, on the other hand, made students grow and cook their own food. Even environmental science courses, such as Field Research and Wildlife Forensics and Sharkfin Trade, had field- and laboratory-based learning as central to their pedagogical design.

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Global Affairs is a multidisciplinary major within the Social Sciences, focused on global issues and global solutions. The goal of the Global Affairs major is to help students understand how our increasingly interconnected world works and how it could work better. The major equips students with the social science research skills, multi-perspectival and big-picture thinking, and knowledge of the international system needed to understand and address today’s transboundary challenges. The Global Affairs major provides an academic programme that is not constrained by a single disciplinary lens. Instead, it seeks to ground students’ training in both international relations and international development, recognising that political, economic, and social actors in the Global South and Global North are tightly intertwined in today’s globalised world.

Students in Global Affairs explore the causes and consequences of globalisation, international migration, international development, security and conflict, ethnic politics, human rights violations, and global governance. Through their coursework, students are taught how to critically engage with and interrogate both qualitative and quantitative research on global issues.

Mixed methods: Classes encouraged students to be open to quantitative and qualitative methods, encouraging a flexibility of thinking.

The History major offers students the opportunity to explore the complex relationship between our understanding of the past and our experience of the present. Through the study of history, students will learn to interpret past events, understand societies and peoples, and recognise patterns and structures in history. They will also attend to the ways in which historians’ narratives of the past often reflect contemporary concerns and assumptions.

Course offerings in the History major span a wide range of geographical regions, such as East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Indian Ocean. They also address important thematic issues such as empire, colonialism, modernisation, urbanisation, science and technology, migration and diaspora, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and material culture. In consultation with the History faculty, students will have the freedom to shape their own pathways in the major according to their geographical and thematic interests.

The History major was created at the outset of the College. Faculty involved included Derek Heng, Claudine Ang, and Taran Kang, among others.

The basic form of the major has not changed that much over the years, though we did some restructuring of our core requirements, including the removal of Craft of History course and folding the skills taught therein into other courses, such as the Capstone Seminar. Specific courses have been added or subtracted as faculty have either come to or departed from the College.

A variety of methods depending on the course. Overall, the major has an inherently global focus with different regional and trans-regional historical offerings.

A (non-inclusive) sample of recent course offerings in the major includes:

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The aim of the Life Sciences major at Yale-NUS College was to provide students with the intellectual and scholarly skills that equipped them to conduct research, and apply a scientific approach to problem-solving. This aim benefited students who pursued academic research as a career, as well as those interested in careers in science-dependent fields, including Singapore's strong biomedical and biotechnology industries.

Students gained valuable skills: understanding scientific inquiry, data analysis, interpreting results, and clear communication. They also learned critical thinking, asking good questions, and communicating effectively with both scientists and the public. They were able to do so because Yale-NUS College's small class sizes allowed for tailoring the curriculum to individual needs and fostering deeper interactions with professors and the material.  

The goal of the Life Sciences major was to prepare students for careers in Life Sciences. As the Life Sciences encompasses extremely broad fields from molecular and biomedical studies to ecology and evolution, staffing the major with a diversity of faculty that allows for breadth and depth was a major challenge. Historically, the Life Sciences major had to be flexible in their mindset due to the small number of faculty, the diverse interests and the heavy commitment to teaching in the common curriculum.

Another important challenge that shaped the major in the early years was the absence of research laboratory space on campus for the molecular experimental Life Sciences faculty, who had to be located off campus in the Medical School, Engineering, and at A*STAR. This limited student access to work in laboratories and in some cases the type of faculty research interests that could be hired.

These two factors shaped and evolved hand-in-hand. In some cases, it enriched student learning as they were exposed to a broader world outside the College. In others, it channeled their interests to specific domains.

Over the course of the first 5 years, some faculty did manage to set up their research programs and organize laboratory space on the Yale-NUS campus, and in the engineering school building, E6. The latter, though outside the campus was within 15-20 minutes of the College, and became a science hub with state-of-the-art facilities for students inclined to use molecular biology tools in model organisms. One of the laboratory methods courses (Biology Laboratory) was conducted in these premises eventually, that helped students familiarize with the settings. On campus, insectaria and molecular biology teaching labs were set up that developed into a Science Center, and engaged faculty from Life Sciences and Environmental Studies major who had overlapping research interests. These developments took a few years, but, provided a managed solution to the original challenges the major faced.

The Literature major refines students’ capacities to interpret human experiences creatively represented in the written word.  Poetry, drama, novels, and stories present a universe of human imagination for Literature students to explore critically.  Drawing on the unique linguistic diversity of the students and faculty at Yale-NUS, the Literature major features courses in world Anglophone literature and beyond: our students also pursue studies in Chinese languages, ancient Greek, and Latin in Singapore and abroad, often in conjunction with the Chinese Studies or Global Antiquity independent minors. Graduates in Literature will exercise their versatile skills in attentive reading, persuasive writing, and cross-cultural criticism wherever sophisticated interpretative and rhetorical awareness is required, for instance, law, journalism, education, and marketing. Training in Literature also enhances creative pursuits in writing, screenwriting, and game design.

Professor of Humanities (Literature) Rajeev S Patke: The Literature major was created more in the spirit of Comparative Literature rather than English Literature, as it is known in NUS, as it played on the strength of the founding faculty, who were experts in literatures from all around the world.

Lecturer of Humanities (Literature) Dr Emily Dalton: The unique environment of Yale-NUS has very much shaped my approach to teaching. From my first seminars at the College, I was struck by students’ enthusiasm for creative engagement with texts. Over time, I have incorporated more creative activities and projects into my courses, such that they have become a key feature of my electives. Previously accustomed to more traditional teaching styles, I have come to appreciate the value of imaginative engagement alongside analytical approaches as affording distinct but complementary insights into the literary works we study – particularly in drawing connections with intellectual and cultural contexts outside medieval Europe.

One of the challenges I faced in designing courses in medieval literature was how to present historically and culturally remote material in ways that were accessible and engaging but nonetheless intellectually rigorous. Each of my electives was organized around a theme or topic (death and mourning, magic and the supernatural, animals and ecology) that I hoped would have a broad appeal beyond the medieval context, a topic we could investigate in its historical and cultural specificity but that would also offer points of connection with contemporary concerns. I also tried to give a taste of some of the other skills required in medieval studies by guiding students through some Middle English recitation, translation, and palaeography exercises that provided a better sense of poetic form and medieval manuscript culture.

Dr Emily Dalton: Each of the electives I taught had its own highlights for me: in “Real and Imagined Animals,” I loved compiling the imaginative bestiary entries that students designed modelled on medieval compendia but oriented toward non-European contexts, the climate crisis, and the use of urban space in Singapore. In “Medieval Romance,” I looked forward to the activity in which students created trailers for an imagined film of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a way of thinking about genre and how the poem plays with narrative expectations. “Death, Mourning, and Memory” covered some very dense and allusive texts that demanded a particular kind of critical attention: spending three weeks immersed in the world of Dante’s Inferno was a challenging but fascinating experience. At the other end of the spectrum, I was delighted to learn that many students felt that Montaigne’s much more uplifting On Practice had significantly influenced their own outlook on living.

One of the features of Yale-NUS that I have most appreciated is the opportunity to develop close mentoring relationships with students through capstone advising, summer research projects, and independent studies. Seeing students’ capstone projects come together across a year of research, collaborating on medieval teaching resources, and delving into a range of topics through Independent Studies – from medieval romance to modern Welsh to isekai webtoons – have been a treasured part of my experience at the College.

Beyond teaching courses, I immensely enjoyed creating the Medieval Kingfisher website along with my research assistant Hong Jin Toh (Class of 2023). The site compiles resources to support the study of medieval literature at Yale-NUS and presents a range of creative and analytical works produced by students across all the electives I’ve taught; for me, it has been a testament to the rich possibilities of studying medieval texts in a liberal arts environment. Finally, it has been a privilege to supervise some ambitious and impressive capstone projects: watching a project develop from an initial idea to a sophisticated scholarly contribution presented at the capstone symposium is a wonderful tribute to the accomplishments of the Literature majors and the value of the Literature programme at Yale-NUS.

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Mathematics and computation have occupied a central place in the liberal arts curriculum from its earliest history. In recent centuries, the mathematical sciences have been viewed as fundamental in describing the laws of nature – the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics. In the twentieth century, statistics enabled the growth of social sciences. In the present day, computers are not merely aiding in the observation of societies, but reshaping them. We encourage students to participate actively in these flourishing developments. Our students have embarked on projects to design robots, launch software, analyse big data networks, develop data visualisation tools, and philosophise on randomness and chaos.

MCS includes the diverse, but connected fields of mathematics, computer science and statistics. They all heavily build on fundamentals and knowledge development in specific areas can only happen progressively.

Planning for the Mathematical, Computational and Statistical Sciences (MCS) major began in the 2012-13 academic year, with a view to its first major courses being taught, in common with the other Science majors, to sophomores in the 2014-15 academic year. (At that stage, the curriculum was structured so that many Science majors would be fully occupied with the Common Curriculum throughout their first year.)

The original intention was to create a broad major, enabling students to acquire expertise in breadth as well as depth. It was recognized that how it took shape would be influenced by, and itself influence, the MCS faculty hires that were to be made as well as students’ demand. The initial development of the Major was guided by a student-centric approach, to ensure that students could gain a solid education across as much of the mathematical, computational and statistical sciences spectrum as practically possible, given the small size of the College, and in particular of the Major. This ambition was made feasible by access to the relevant departments of NUS, each large and of high international research stature.

Another formative point for the MCS curriculum development was the realization – well known to those with university education in the MCS disciplines, but not more widely appreciated – that university-level MCS studies, with a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding, differ greatly from what is taught at the secondary level, where formula manipulation and memorization tend to predominate. This implied a need to introduce material to students at an early stage, both in the Common Curriculum and in electives, that would expose students to this unfamiliar approach before committing to a major.

The major was originally conceived of as “Mathematics and Computer Science” or MCS. Over time, with the growing number of students interested in data science, it was re-branded as “Mathematical, Computational, and Statistical Sciences” and still abbreviated as MCS. The earliest MCS faculty were Jon Berrick (mathematics), Martin Weissman (mathematics), Aquinas Hobor (computer science), and Alex Cook (statistics).

The interdisciplinary nature of the MCS major was somewhat ahead of its time. In recent years, many educational institutions (including NUS) have realized the advantages of capitalising on the synergies between the constituent disciplines and created new interdisciplinary majors, often emphasising data science.

The MCS major turned out to be much more popular than expected, typically being the first or second most popular choice of major in each cohort. This unexpected popularity presented challenges in staffing and advising, but was overall very much a boon.

The Major has witnessed a huge increase (unpredicted by the College founders) in student numbers over the years. The overwhelming majority of past and current MCS majors did not arrive at the College intending to major in MCS (nor in other sciences). Moreover, a fair proportion of MCS majors first chose other majors, but switched to MCS later.

MCS faculty employed a wide range of teaching styles. Where appropriate, courses emphasized the connections between the three constituent fields. Innovative pedagogies, such as flipped classrooms and team-based learning, we employed at all levels of instruction.

Moreover, MCS faculty are active in developing and promoting new teaching strategies. For example, a faculty member was the Principal Investigator (PI) on a teaching innovation grant funded by the Yale-NUS Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and is currently a co-PI on a teaching enhancement grant from the NUS Centre for the Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL). Unprompted, several MCS faculty created their own informal teaching circles, to visit and coach each other in their class teaching.

The most important courses in the MCS major were the foundational ones, specifically Proof and Introduction to Computer Science, which were also the very first courses created for the MCS major. These courses introduced students to the modes of thought that separate MCS from other sciences.

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Philosophy majors want to understand human nature, right and wrong, good and bad; the nature of mind and its relation to the body; the structure of reality and the structure of our concepts – and how they might connect; how people intend, and words mean; the fundamental nature of the cosmos and our place in it; how persons live together, what they owe each other, and the meaning of the concepts that pervade our shared discourse: autonomy, authority, individual, freedom, play. Yale-NUS students did all of this in concert with the most influential of minds that tried to do the same – with Plato and Nāgārjuna, Kumārila and Xunzi, Zhu Xi and Kant.
It was the hallmark of Yale-NUS Philosophy to recognise that philosophy happens all over the world, at all times. Moreover, the major recognised that everything can be approached philosophically, and any number of pursuits can nourish one’s philosophical acuity. The result was a Philosophy major unlike any other.

When the major was conceived, philosophy courses in most English-speaking universities in North America and Europe almost exclusively emphasised the Anglo-American and European traditions. While our faculty were fully conversant in these traditions, our programme also included leading experts in other traditions, including Indian and Chinese traditions. And all faculty taught thinkers from these traditions as well. Thus, in Yale-NUS Philosophy seminars, students came across ideas that they would not find anywhere else.

Philosophy was deeply infused into Yale-NUS’ Common Curriculum. Hence, Yale-NUS had one of the largest collection of philosophers at any liberal arts college in the world. They were devoted teachers who were always ready to talk philosophy with students. At the same time, they regularly released books with major presses, published articles in leading journals, and won prestigious fellowships and prizes.
In this environment, our students engaged in innovative work that made them highly sought after in the competitive world of graduate admissions. Our students also set themselves apart in other ways, in fields ranging from consulting to leadership development.

The major was designed during regular meetings over the course of AY 2013-14. The faculty who participated in the initial design of the major that year included Andrew M. Bailey, Sandra Leonie Field, Jay L. Garfield, Cathay Liu, Neil Mehta, Nico Silins, and Matthew D. Walker. In subsequent years, additional faculty – Amber D. Carpenter, Malcolm Keating, Bryan W. Van Norden, Robin Zheng – joined the major and contributed to its further development. Lecturers and visiting faculty who contributed to the life of the major included Ben Blumson (NUS), Fabien Chereix (Sorbonne), Simon Duffy, Fabien Geier, Kathryn Muyskens, Sherice Ngaserin, Sovan Patra, Yunus Prasetya, Christine Abigail Tan. Affiliated faculty included Scott Cook (Chinese Studies), Gavin Flood (Religious Studies), Taran Kang (History), Ben Schupmann (PPE), and Christina Tarnopolsky (PPE).

The original major was designed to have three dimensions: (1) skills; (2) traditions; and (3) something old, something new. Over time, the major simplified this structure by keeping (1) skills and (2) traditions dimensions, but incorporating the “something old, something new” dimension within one of the skills.

This structure, which had no specifically required courses, was designed to enable students to pursue their philosophical interests with flexibility, though within suitable constraints. In this spirit, the major encouraged interdisciplinarity by allowing students to count coursework from other majors toward the major in certain cases, e.g., if necessary for a student’s capstone work. Further, the major, by maintaining a traditions dimension, encouraged a cross-cultural approach to philosophy in line with Yale-NUS’s aims of offering a global liberal arts curriculum.

Philosophy major faculty contributed in large measure to the Common Curriculum, especially to Philosophy and Political Thought (PPT) I and II, but also to Modern Social Thought and Historical Immersion. Given the heavy demand for faculty to teach in PPT 1 and 2, in particular, staffing a full roster of major electives was a persistent challenge. But students and faculty in the major maintained a strong esprit de corps during Yale-NUS’s existence, and approximately half of Yale-NUS’s philosophy alumni ended up pursuing graduate philosophical study at top programs around the world, including City University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, KU Leuven, New York University, University of California at Riverside, University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto, among other institutions.

Philosophy seminars emphasized active philosophical conversation, close reading and textual analysis, problem solving and argument analysis, student presentations, cross-cultural thinking, in-class projects, and many other methods. The major was among the most cross-disciplinary at Yale-NUS: seminars regularly linked philosophy with politics, economics, religion, mathematics, the sciences, the arts, game design, social theory, history, and the study of Indian, Chinese, and Greek antiquity.

The electives offered within the Philosophy major suggest the range of interests among the major’s faculty, as well as the major’s aims to promote a cross-cultural vision of philosophy as a human enterprise:

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The Physical Sciences (PS) major starts with the premise of using deep physical concepts, from physics, chemistry, and related basic sciences, to understand the world around us. Beginning with the most basic components, described in a manner that retains only the most crucial features, the physical scientist learns to systematically add layers of complexity to approach the real-world situation.

The skills acquired while pursuing the major includes critical thinking, technical problem solving, theoretical modelling, numerical simulation, empirical observations, and experimental know-how.

The basic structure of the major follows that of standard physics and chemistry majors in a typical university. However, because of the merged nature of the PS major, as well as the faculty’s recognition of the opportunities for cross-disciplinary discussions between physics and chemistry, we tried to have also courses that are common to both physics and chemistry students. Over the years, this has developed as having General Physics and General Chemistry requirements for all students in the major, as well as a common Statistical Thermodynamics course required for both physics and chemistry students. We also have three common Methods courses (Experimental Methods, Computational Methods, and Mathematical Methods) that cater to students from both physics and chemistry (although, in reality, Math Methods tend to be taken more by physics students, as physics courses tend to have more math; the other two are taken by students from both sides). The content of these common courses employ both physics and chemistry examples, and can be taught by faculty from either field. The PS Research Seminar course is also a common required course for all students in the major, and this provides a space in their senior year for students from both physics and chemistry to interact and share about their Capstone projects.

The main difficulty has always been the issue of not having enough curricular space to accommodate the major courses. With the Common Curriculum, our students have less space for major courses. This is especially an issue for the PS major, where both physics and chemistry curriculum tend to be rather sequential, with many pre-requisites that have to be taken early in a student’s course of student, for sufficient options in the later years. Many of our students also aim to go for graduate studies, and the graduate schools expect a certain slate of courses in physics or chemistry, often one that has more courses than what our students have space for. As a result, our courses are often very compressed – compared to those in NUS, each course in PS can often be like 1.5x the amount of content in an NUS equivalent course, so that our student has exposure in that one course to something that an NUS student would take over the first 1.5 of a 2-course sequence. The intensity of our courses are often hard on the student and on the faculty.

Another big issue is the small size of the major, which meant that we never have the demand to run many high-level specialized courses. Our students’ interests are very diverse, and it is simply impossible for us, with our faculty size, to be able to provide a comprehensive slate of specialized courses. Instead, students are directed to take those specialized courses in the physics or chemistry departments in NUS. Because of this, students in their final year can often be taking the majority of their PS courses in NUS, rather than in Yale-NUS.

The teaching methods for PS courses are pretty standard, but our faculty of course make good use of the closer interactions because of the small class sizes.

Urban Studies is a multi-disciplinary field of study that offers students an in-depth understanding of cities, the processes that give rise to them, and their social and environmental consequences.

The Urban Studies major draws on the insights and approaches of a range of disciplines, including sociology, geography and environmental science, architecture and planning, political science, anthropology, economics and history. The programme takes full advantage of Singapore as a global city and city state and its strategic location in Southeast Asia.

The programme recognises that urbanisation happens at a scale and pace never seen before in human history. To understand society today, we must ask urban questions. The programme engages students who are curious about the city, enthralled by its architecture, energised by its culture, troubled by its social injustices, worried about its environmental harms, or enthusiastic about its economic and creative potentials.

The founding vision of the College always included an Urban Studies major. This reflected the intellectual vision of the founding leaders and in particular that of Lily Kong, who is a geographer. Also, it was assumed that in Singapore, where there is an emphasis on urban solutions, such a major would thrive.

Professor Jane M Jacobs was the inaugural Head of Studies and appointment. We grew slowly at first as there was a priority in other areas linked to the Common Curriculum. We appointed a planner, Nick Smith, from the Harvard GSD programme as the next faculty member, followed by geographer Yaffa Truelove. This set the core initial faculty, with others coming and going across the decade. It was important as the major grew to have more senior presence and local expertise. This was achieved through joint appointments from NUS sociology, notably Professors Chua Beng Huat and Ho Kong Chong, both of whom have served time as Head of Studies.

The concept and direction of the major was developed firstly by Professor Jane M Jacobs. She did this through a process of benchmarking against other such urban studies programmes, particularly ones in liberal arts settings. As we were in a liberal arts environment we stressed that we were not a professional programme. Sure, our grads might go on into related professional programmes, but we really wanted our undergraduate programme to be built on a concept that reflected a liberal arts ethos. As such, we used to talk about our Urban Studies major as offering students a way of inquiring into one powerful, diverse and enduring manifestation of the human condition and its world making – the city and processes of urbanization. Once we had settled on this ethos, other aspects of the programme followed.

YSS4234 Heritage class on a field trip to Joo Chiat, in conversation with the owner of Kway Guan Huat, popiah skin maker, a heritage food business started in 1939.

Jane M Jacobs and Nick Smith worked together to set down some of the core elements of our approach to knowledge so that students could discern how our major differed from other social science and environmental majors offered in the College. Central to this was the notion of “spatial reasoning”. This became the analytical focal point from which other dimensions of the major radiated, including our approach to ethics (e.g. spatial justice), to techniques (e.g. Geographical Information Systems and data visualization), as well as to topic coverage (e.g. to always question theory built from western cities by looking comparatively at cities elsewhere).  Significantly, the team all worked together to design the introductory course, led by Nick Smith and Jane M Jacobs. “Cities A to Z” (actually the course was called Adelaide to Zhuhai: Cities in a Comparative Perspective). The name reflected Professor Jacobs home town (Adelaide) and a city in China (Assistant Professor Smith’s area of research).

In terms of recruitment and emphasis in the programme, Professor Jacobs made an early decision to have a team that reflected disciplinary diversity. The steady state team in Urban Studies included academics trained in planning, architecture, geography and sociology.

There are a number of key emphases in teaching:

Spatial Reasoning
‍This was the approach or lens that distinguished our programme from others and which was reflected in all courses. It had technical expression in two key courses: YSS3273 Geospatial & Demographic Methods and YSS3235 Urban Spatial Reasoning.

Experiential Learning
Understanding the city and urbanization by experiencing it was a clear commitment from the outset in the major. We have for many years included a field trip in the introductory course to either Batam or Jahore, using these places as a way to explore Singapore as an extended urban region. Prof Chua Beng Huat’s Urban Singapore is also a course built primarily around field visits scaffolded with relevant readings and assignments. A number of faculty also offered extracurricular field experiences including Prof Jacobs’ London LAB, Prof Smith’s Boston LAB, and Prof Cardoso’s Malacca Week 7.

Comparative Perspective
Thinking beyond Western urban theory and generating perspectives from non-Western urban contexts is a core commitment of the programme. This comparative perspective is the driving rational of the introductory course “Cities A to Z”. In that course we have a series of core themes that are then instantiated by way of selected cities. Not only does this de-centre western concepts of urbanization, it also broadens the empirical knowledge of students.

Visual and Studio-style Learning
We often would emphasis visual learning and crit-style pin ups. The outputs in the major were often showcased in exhibitions, particularly in Urban Spatial Reasoning.

YSS3217 Urbanization in China — Professor Yong Zhang

"I still vividly remember my first day stepping into Classroom 5 at Saga on 8 August 2022, marking my inaugural teaching day at Yale-NUS. It was a nerve-wracking yet exhilarating experience as I stood before 18 students, the maximum capacity allowed. The intimacy of the classroom setting was a stark contrast to the lecture halls I had grown accustomed to, reminiscent of the tutorial courses I had previously undertaken in Manchester. However, there was an added layer of pressure – the students' expectations were notably higher.

During that session, I introduced the module design that I had adopted from my previous instructor, Nick Smith, and tailored it to reflect my expertise. Drawing upon my first-hand research on urban China and my connections within the community of urban China researchers, I endeavoured to create an intellectually stimulating yet supportive learning environment.

Utilising a variety of methods including lectures, seminars, discussions, debates, guest talks, and films, I aimed to provide the students with a comprehensive understanding of the waves of urbanization in China. Moreover, I encouraged them to develop their own research interests, guiding them in transforming these interests into manageable research projects utilising second-hand materials.

As the final session approached its end, I stepped out of the classroom briefly to allow the students to complete their teaching evaluations for the course. Upon my return, I was deeply touched to find that the students had presented me with a thank-you card, adorned with their signatures and best wishes. This unexpected gesture made the course one of the most unforgettable experiences of my tenure at YNC, leaving a lasting impression on me."

The Urban Studies major put a lot of energy into building a community. This started with “swag” and we were the first major to introduce programme-level swag. Herein began the annual tradition of an existing Urban Studies student/s designing a tote bag to be presented to the newly declared majors. We also put a lot of energy into the Major’s Fair, using urban infrastructure props and developing a postcard series reflecting themes and places in the major.

We also sponsored annual events that celebrated the Urban Studies major and created social opportunities for students and faculty to mix, and for prospective students to see what we got up to.  We called these “block parties” and they usually involved an ice cream cart! We also routinely mentored students into various community engagement initiatives such as Parking Day.