We recently spoke with NUS College Club (NUSCC) Presidents to get to know them better. Outgoing Acting-President Ashley Lui (Pharmaceutical Science + NUSC ’26) shared about her own leadership experiences while heading the Management Committee (MC). Likewise, incoming President He Yiyang (Sociology + NUSC ’27) shared about what it is like to take on this mantle and lead NUSC to greater heights. Together, they emphasized the importance of community.

By Tan Enn Syn, Shona ’25

The two most recent NUSCC Presidents: Ashley Lui (left) and He Yiyang (right)

Hi! Could you give us a short introduction of yourself?

Yiyang: I’m Yiyang, a Year 2 student, majoring in Sociology and minoring in Political Science. I’m an international student and have spent roughly 10 years in Shanghai, 10 years in Budapest and now around 1.5 years in Singapore.

Ashley: I’m Ashley, a Year 3 Pharmaceutical Science student. I’m also an international student from Malaysia but I’ve been in Singapore for the past eight years.

What three words would your friends use to describe you? Why so?

Yiyang: Curious, organized and driven. I’m generally curious about the world, especially within my discipline. I question a lot of what I see and enjoy having interesting conversations with my peers in NUSC. Next, I would say organized or disciplined since I try to keep things on track whenever I work so that deadlines are met and/or tasks are well distributed. Finally, I would say driven. My friends always say I set goals and work hard to achieve them, which is pretty true – I often push myself in areas of my interest. At the moment, this happens to be my discipline, extracurriculars and general personal growth! 

Ashley: Calm, funny and practical. Firstly, calm – to conserve energy, I’m usually on what they call “battery saving mode”…if not, you would catch me napping everywhere. I’d also say that I’m relatively funny. I believe that the best way to deal with problems is to find the joy or humour in it and spread it with the people around me! Lastly, my friends would probably say that I’m very practical. After having to live independently for the past 8 years, my thinking has become very tailored to what’s the most efficient way to solve things. For example, since we have to move out and move in every semester, I’ve now made sure all my things can fit into two large boxes and one luggage. [A/N: Wow, pretty impressive indeed!]

Yiyang, what is one change or new initiative that you most look forward to accomplishing during your term as President?

Yiyang: While part of the previous MC as well as a Year 1 student, I saw an information gap and I felt there was a need to encourage more two-way conversations. The current MC has already organised Meet the Deanery sessions to give NUSC students a channel to discuss certain issues in a more informal setting and to understand the rationales behind certain decisions better. So far, we’ve received quite positive feedback from these sessions. We’re trying to make NUSC work as a larger community, not only within the student body, but also alongside the NUSC Admin team and the Deanery.

Ashley, looking back on your term as President, what is one key accomplishment that you’re most proud of?

Ashley: The community umbrella initiative. We saw that people were donating umbrellas for everyone else to use and that it wasn’t just the MC members doing this. Being able to see that people were actually using them and taking part in this initiative was the most special thing for me, and I think that was a simple yet most memorable policy that we enacted.

How does NUSC nurture student leaders amongst encouraging other critical soft skills today?

Ashley: From my personal experience, it is the NUSC community that nurtures the want to enact change. At least, that’s what I felt when I decided to run for the Comm[unity] Life position. I felt a strong sense of responsibility and desire to make things better for everyone, to make this community a home.

Yiyang: I would definitely agree. The reason I ran for my second election – for the role of President, this time – was because I saw a community that made us feel that all the work that we did in the past year was worth it. Personally, as an international student, NUSC gives the sense of being a second home and this makes you hope to contribute to the wider community in whatever way they can. NUSC is also a space which gives you significant freedom, to the extent that you are allowed to enact change and make ideas possible. I had many team members with wonderful ideas which we were able to make a reality, and this contributed to our orientation program in many ways. Having people from different disciplines really helps you to get different insights and perspectives from this community.

What’s one unexpected thing or a fun fact about being Student President that most people don’t know?

Ashley: Quite a few things, actually. One that was really surprising to me was the kind of relations you able to form with the staff, which is something that I don’t think you ever see in any other faculties. Perhaps it’s part of the student-prof[essor] ratio. Overall, a good number of the staff that work here are genuinely invested in this community as much as we are. I’ll give the example of my Impact Experience (IEx) supervisor. They don’t really need to go beyond for us. They can do the bare minimum, but they choose not to. In fact, they do even more than the students sometimes! So that really came out in my experiences when I was President, when I was working with the deans and professors. They showed that they truly care about the community as much as we do.

Yiyang: I would say that a lot of people have this perception: that as an MC member or as President, we do a lot of things. “We don’t have a personal life” and all – which is not entirely true, but also not entirely wrong. [Laughs]. Yes, we engage in quite a wide variety of affairs. But what people often don’t realise is that it’s actually the people who work behind-the-scenes who make all this possible. I was fortunate to work with a large team of House Committee members, Residential Assistants (RAs), Interest Group (IG) Heads and beyond. Also on the administrative side, the staff advisors who we work with. All in all, there’s quite a lot of work that goes beyond the people who are usually seen. I think that a lot of their work should be appreciated, not overlooked. It’s why I always take time to get to know who they are and find ways to appreciate them.

Ashley and Yiyang posing with a poster of their predecessor, the first NUSCC President, Gautham s/o Vijayan Kumaran (Biomedical Engineering + NUSC [USP] ’24)

What is one piece of advice you’ve received that you would like to pass down? 

Ashley: Not all fights are your fights. You really don’t have to do everything by yourself – you have a whole team that you can mobilize at any time, who are standing behind you, by your side. This is something that didn’t come right to me at the start as advice, but more of something that I learned throughout my term, and that I drew on from the support around me.

Yiyang: Find your own support network outside the MC. This is something that Gautham, the first president of the NUSCC, told me. The reason is that all MC members have their own portfolios and responsibilities. Sometimes, it’s good to have an external perspective, especially if we feel like talking to someone about the things we experience as an MC member. That being said, within the MC we know that we can always count on each other. Right now with my MC, we also hang out with each other just as friends. It’s something I appreciate because we are beyond just working relations. We’re a small group who can find support in each other in hard times which makes, I think, our work at times a little less boring, less tedious. But it’s always important to strike a balance.

What is your vision for NUS College and the NUSC student community? 

Ashley: NUSC has been a place where I’ve experienced a lot of kindness, gratitude and wholesomeness. I hope that this lives on. I hope that NUSC can continue to be a safe space for everyone, no matter who or where they come from.

Yiyang: The community often has justifiably had many strong opinions while we have undergone a lot of spatial and structural changes. We are in the midst of forming a very new identity, one that is currently not very well-defined yet. This is something that makes us quite special and it is a unique opportunity to have. I hope to strengthen our community building efforts – with this new identity, we are growing and we are constantly changing. It is really up to the community to shape who we want to become, and the MC’s role is to facilitate this. What we plan to do now is have a properly designed mascot and to create a NUSC wiki where we can try to document and honour what has happened in the past. In doing so, the community can start thinking, discussing and drawing out what our identity is really about. From there, I would say my job or our job is done. It’s really up to the next generations to come together and think about how they want to shape this identity and bring it forward.

Lastly, if you could describe your leadership journey with one iconic phrase, what would it be?

Yiyang: Fall, learn, rise and lead. 

Ashley: This, too, shall pass. 

*Interview responses were edited for length and clarity.