New minor in community leadership

CTPCLC students at this year’s Open Day

NUS students will soon be able to take a course to develop their skills as community leaders. The NUS Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Centre (CTPCLC) will be introducing the Minor in Community Development and Leadership in the upcoming academic year. This programme will be offered to NUS and Yale-NUS undergraduates.

The new Minor had its beginnings in 2011 as a two-module Certificate Programme consisting of a social research project and a module related to community development or social issues. With the increase in active community involvement and advocacy in Singapore, the Centre recognised the need for competent graduates with both research expertise and solid background knowledge of community development and leadership. This, along with frequent requests from students to deepen their engagement in the subject area, drove the decision to expand the course into a full-fledged Minor programme.

“A rigorous and comprehensive Minor programme that focuses on developing community leaders will allow students to hone both the intellectual and practical skills needed to facilitate ground-up processes that are essential for understanding community challenges and contribute to better policy-making,” said Associate Professor Chng Huang Hoon, Director of CTPCLC.

Through the Minor, CTPCLC hopes to offer an academic platform for NUS students to broaden their perspectives about the social issues facing the Singapore community and to help in the development of communities in Singapore.

Besides the two modules from the Certificate Programme, the Minor will also consist of several new elective modules on topics including diversity, inclusion and communication of social issues.