Critical Competencies
The four Critical Competencies and three Global Orientation courses are the foundation of the NUS College curriculum and are intended to be read within the first two years. Although students have some flexibility in choosing their pathway through the curriculum, you are encouraged to complete the foundational curriculum while in residence to take advantage of in-house academic resources, and to immerse yourself in our close-knit intellectual community.
The Critical Competencies courses – Thinking with Writing, Reasoning with Data, Computational Problem Solving, and Understanding the Social World: Singapore and Beyond – target foundational academic skills and feature transdisciplinary thinking and inquiry, preparing students with a toolkit of skills that they can apply in later courses.
The timetable and details of the foundational courses offered can be found here.
Thinking with Writing
Thinking with Writing comprises a suite of topic-based, interdisciplinary courses which aim to impart students with transferable skills in academic inquiry, writing and research. Syllabi are designed to encourage students to compare multiple disciplinary perspectives on complex issues, understand how disciplinary frameworks shape how a question is formulated and discern the strengths and weaknesses of individual disciplinary approaches. Students learn to read and evaluate arguments, formulate interesting questions, develop their own arguments and participate in an ongoing academic debate. All writing assignments are sequenced in such a way that they build on one another, each adding to the skills that students have gained from a previous assignment. Major writing assignments are scaffolded or systematically broken down into manageable tasks: students submit proposals and drafts for review, provide feedback to their peers, attend individual (or small-group) conferences with their instructor and finally, revise their drafts. Through the process of drafting and redrafting their essay, students have multiple opportunities to refine their ideas and improve their writing skills. The transferable skills in which students are trained serve as a foundation for their ongoing development at NUS College.
Course Leaders
Dr Leung Wing Sze
Leung Wing Sze wleung@nus.edu.sg
Dr Leung Wing Sze received her PhD from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include moral theories, multiculturalism, colonial studies, globalisation, and the relation between ethics and aesthetics. She has published in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Romanticism and The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel 1660-1820 (forthcoming), Educational Theory (forthcoming) and Asian Journal of the Scholarship and Teaching and Learning (forthcoming).
Lo Mun Hou
Yew Kong Leong lyew@nus.edu.sg
Dr Yew Kong Leong is a Senior Lecturer in NUS College. He has joined since 2002 and is currently the coordinator of the University Senior Seminar (USR) programme. He had also previously served as a Writing and Critical Thinking (WCT) coordinator.
Reasoning with Data
This course concerns how data are collected, organised, analysed, presented, and discussed to gain understanding and guide actions. Students build numerical intuition and skills in data visualisation, descriptive and inferential statistics, probability, and hypothesis testing. Each topic is explored with real-world data and contexts ranging from voting patterns to environmental quality. To facilitate problem-solving and practical application, the course uses both a flipped classroom approach and team-based learning with peers from diverse technical and quantitative backgrounds. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on critical approaches and conceptual understanding alongside technical mastery.
Course Leaders
Edmund Low
Edmund Low edmundlow@nus.edu.sg
Dr Edmund Low received his PhD in Environmental Engineering from Yale University. He has taught courses on environmental engineering, data science, and health and safety.
Dr Low has nearly 20 years of academic and professional experience in the use of computational modelling and data-driven tools, applying them to solve problems in public health, water resource management, and air quality in buildings.
He is a Senior Lecturer at NUS College and is co-leading the creation and implementation of the Reasoning with Data course, as well as the Computational Problem Solving course.
Edmund Low
Loo Yoke Leng ylloo@nus.edu.sg
Dr Loo Yoke Leng obtained her PhD in Physics from the National University of Singapore. Her research interest is in Metamaterials and Metadevices.
Computational Problem Solving
Algorithms permeate every aspect of our 21st century lives, from simple daily activities like an internet search, to analysing complex problems like cybersecurity and climate change. This course’s main aim is to enable students to learn how computational methods can be used to formulate, solve, and analyse problems that relate to their everyday lives. What is possible and what is not? What are the limitations of these methods and how can they be used for current and future problems? How can problems be approached with the help of the current arsenal of digital technologies and which problems are being born from the development of those technologies? Students explore both technical and social aspects of some of the algorithms that impact their day-to-day lives. Examples might include, but are not limited to, Google’s PageRank algorithm, recommender systems such as those employed by video streaming services, social media platforms, and facial recognition technology.
Course Leaders
Mikhail Filippov
Mikhail Filippov filippov@nus.edu.sg
Dr Mikhail Filippov holds a PhD in Physics from the Nanyang Technological University. As a mathematical physicist, he studied the dynamics of complex systems and has built mathematical and AI models for tsunami prediction, tropical atmosphere, the housing market, historical information and visual cortex of the human brain. His models have been used by NASA and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
His research interests include Applied Physics, Complex Systems, and Neuroesthetics.
Edmund Low
Edmund Low edmundlow@nus.edu.sg
Dr Edmund Low received his PhD in Environmental Engineering from Yale University. He has taught courses on environmental engineering, data science, and health and safety.
Dr Low has nearly 20 years of academic and professional experience in the use of computational modelling and data-driven tools, applying them to solve problems in public health, water resource management, and air quality in buildings.
He is a Senior Lecturer at NUS College and is co-leading the creation and implementation of the Reasoning with Data course, as well as the Computational Problem Solving course.
Understanding the Social World: Singapore and Beyond
The social world is complex. It comprises norms and relationships, identities, and institutions, which together mediate how it is experienced. This course explores social scientific approaches to critically understand these social forces and examines how they interact and influence each other, why they seem natural despite being constructed realities, and analyses their effects on the lived experiences of different peoples. In investigating these complexities, students develop critical insights into these issues as they gain a deeper understanding of Singapore and other societies undergoing rapid change brought forth by economic growth, globalisation, climate change, technological advancement, and growing inequality.
Course Leaders
Alberto Pérez Pereiro
Alberto Pérez Pereiro app@nus.edu.sg
Dr Alberto Pérez Pereiro is a Lecturer in NUS College. He received his BS in Languages and an MAT – Bilingual Education from Georgetown University, and his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Arizona State University for ethnographic research conducted among Muslim communities in Cambodia. He has over ten years of experience deploying social science knowledge in development and educational projects for the US and Cambodian governments, as well as a number of local and international NGOs.
Bjorn Gomes
Peter Vail petervail@yale-nus.edu.sg
A/P Peter Vail is an Associate Professor in NUS College. His academic training is chiefly in Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology and Sociolinguistics. A/P Vail received a BA in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley; an MS in Linguistics at Georgetown University; and an MA, PhD in Anthropology at Cornell University.
His geographical focus is on mainland Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. He maintains a keen interest in anthropological approaches to film, and is an avid woodworker.