2023 will see a new Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) campus in Punggol Digital District. The campus will work with industry partners and the community of Singapore’s north-east. This integration will boost the university’s industry-focused, applied-learning model.
Since the campus will share its grounds with JTC Corporation’s business park buildings in the Punggol Digital District, this will allow for students and industry professionals to collaborate together on projects, such as in areas of cyber security, engineering, food technology and assistive technology.
Moreover, the campus will be open to public, as members of the general public will be able to enter ground level spaces, park areas, market village and their food court.
During the ceremony for the campus, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, stated that SIT sets itself apart from the rest of the universities with its focus on practice-oriented learning.
Singapore’s Ministry of Education established SIT in 2010. Today, the autonomous university, with an enrolment of 8,000 students, offers 42 degree programmes and award degrees.
Prime Minister Lee also stated that SIT’s learning model ensures that students achieve their degree aspiration and guarantee a job in the industry, based on the 90 per cent job rate for SIT graduates. As its own new, consolidated campus in Punggol, SIT will be able to fortify the strong nexus that it has with the industry.
The Punggol campus boasts a range of state-of-the art features, including a smart network of more than 10,000 sensors that will collect temperature, ambient light and human presence data, which will be analysed and regulated to ensure an optimum working environment for the students.
In addition, it is also South East Asia’s first university to have a multi-energy micro-grid network, which will get energy from diverse sources. This would help SIT to save energy and eliminate carbon emissions.
According to the president of SIT, Tan Thiam Soon, the new Punggol campus will see an annual intake of more than 3,000 undergraduates for the academic years. The university has played a vital role in realising the government’s target of increasing the university enrolment rate to 40 per cent by 2020.
However, he also mentioned that it would not be possible without the strong support of the Government to build a campus at this point in time, when technology is beginning to have a huge impact on how students learn.