Saturday, July 25, 2020

2 Sikh Women Promoted At Malaysia’s Top University 'Universiti Malaya (UM)'

   New deans at Universiti Malaya( (L-R) Dr Surinderpal Kaur, Dr. Jatswan Singh  and Dr. Kiran Kaur.

Malaysia’s top university promoted three Sikhs, including one as a dean, that will see them joining the institution’s Senate.

Universiti Malaya (UM) appointed Dr Surinderpal Kaur as the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics dean, making her probably the second  Sikh to hold a deanship at the Kuala Lumpur-based university.At the same time, UM also appointed Dr Jatswan Singh as the executive director of the Asia-Europe Institute (AEI) and Dr Kiran Kaur as the director of the Quality Management & Enhancement Centre (QMEC).

All three, who are associate professors, will hold their position until 2022.

“They must be very good in their respective areas to land these positions at the nation’s oldest university. They have definitely earned their positions because of their expertise,” Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) emeritus professor Dr Chatar Singh told Asia Samachar.

“It’s was a pleasant surprise to see the elevation of three Sikhs at a go. It speaks well of their years of dedication and work at the university,” said another senior academic.

Dr Surinderpal Kaur, who has been the faculty’s deputy dean since January 2018, is an expert in areas like humanities, linguistics and literature as well as democracy and governance (political discourse, electoral dynamics, protests, dissent, demonstrations, terrorism and insurgency).She co-authored Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacific which was released last year.

Dr Surinderpal, a PhD holder from UK’s Lancaster University, has also been active on the Sikh community front. In 2016, she took an active part  when Kultar’s Mime, a theatre play from US, came Malaysia.She also spearheaded two plays – ‘Marjana to Mittar: Bhai Mardana’s Story’ in 2017 and ‘Tribute to the Tenth’ in 2018.

Dr Jatswan Singh, who holds a PhD from Leeds University, is an expert in areas like conflict resolution, foreign policy and comparative politics for contemporary Southeast Asia. He is the author of Historical Dictionary of Brunei Darussalam and is an expert on Myanmar.

Dr Kiran Kaur is from the Department of Library & Information Science, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology.The holder of a PhD from UM, she began as a public school teacher where she taught for eight years, and then as a UM librarian for four years. She then joined the faculty as an academic staff in mid-2003.Herresearch interests include information services, service quality, quality management, academic librarianship, social networking, community information services, social capital and scientometrics.

QMEC is responsible for accreditation and quality assurance of all levels of academic programmes in UM.
Dr.Gurdeep Kaur
Associate Professor
Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College
University of Delhi

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