Richelle Chua at Jembrana, Bali, where she and her team created the world’s first edible mangrove jelly for her Impact Experience (IEx) project.
“If there’s a will, then I will find a way.“
This is the piece of advice NUS College (NUSC) 2026 graduate Richelle Chua would offer her first-year self – as a quiet assurance that she would eventually find a way through every obstacle ahead.
Over her four years at the College, she donned many hats: Residential Assistant, NUSCC (NUSC Club) Community Life Director, Vice Onboarding House Leader, Creative Expression Tutor, Head of NUSCreatives (NUSC creative interest group) and Captain of the Captain’s Ball interest group, to name a few.
Each opportunity opened the door to the next – being a Residential Assistant meant crossing paths with peers from all walks of life and those touchpoints naturally drew her into new communities, new connections and new ways to contribute.
Richelle (front row, first from right) and her NUSC Captain’s Ball team, silver medallists at the NUS Inter-Faculty Games (IFG) 2025.
A Different Kind of College
In most schools, academics and co-curricular activities rarely integrate with one another. At NUSC, Richelle found those boundaries dissolve – interest groups span sports, arts and culture, and the people within them constantly cross paths. Students also study and play together. “You can be a classmate during the day, but then at night, you have a Captain’s Ball match together,” Richelle shares. “I get to discover the many different facets of my friends – that’s quite special.”
As part of the pioneering batch of Creative Expression tutors (CREATUres), she offered creative writing, visual arts and performance-related mentoring to NUSC students. Drawing from a Chemistry background, she iteratively challenges the norm that students must remain still within the confines of their disciplines. Someone who has never thought of themselves as creative might leave with a newfound appreciation for the arts.
NUSC opened up a world for Richelle where there was always something new to try and room to grow.
The Art of Showing Up
Richelle’s leadership path in NUSC also grew, quietly and steadily, out of a genuine investment in the people around her. It started small, as a Vice Onboarding House Leader in her first year, looking out for her peers and helping them find their footing. From there, her roles grew in both breadth and depth. She became an NUSC peer mentor for three years, sharing experiences and tips with juniors navigating university life. She took on the role of Residential Assistant, looking out for residents and ensuring they were safe and well-adjusted.
As NUSCC Community Life Director, she co-created and fostered sports and socio-cultural activities across the college, supporting inter-RC (Residential College) initiatives that brought different residential communities together. “I find it to be meaningful work,” she says, “building a genuine connection with so many people.”
That same instinct shaped her work with NUSCreatives. As head of the interest group, Richelle pushed to make the arts more visible and welcoming in College life. She initiated a blackout poetry session: create a visual poem by taking any page of text, blacking out most of the words, leaving behind a completely new message. Richelle loved the form because of how it challenged the poet to be ingenious and resourceful with words on the page. “It doesn’t require you to write from scratch,” she explains. “Just to pay attention to the words, the infinitely many associations that words have, and the semiotic systems beneath meaning-making expressions.” For Richelle, the objective was to make art accessible to everyone.
Lasting Positive Impact
At NUSC, education goes beyond academics. Its Impact Experience (IEx) programme sends students out of the classroom and into communities where they are challenged to create real, lasting impact. For Richelle and her team, that meant travelling to remote Bali, where they worked alongside a local community to advocate for the importance of mangroves in protecting coastal ecosystems.
They had a clear conviction: meaningful change is not a one-time intervention, but something the community can carry forward long after they have left. Mangroves are coastal ecosystems that are quietly vital to the communities that depend on them. The challenge was to create something tangible, something the local community could own and sustain themselves. That meant looking into mangrove-derived products – goods that could generate revenue, keep the community invested and keep the advocacy alive.
The community was already making mangrove crackers and tea. Richelle’s team tried coffee – it did not work as the flavour notes were too sharp. So, they pivoted to something sweeter. The world’s first edible mangrove jelly was thus born. Named Jembrana Jelly, it was built not just as a product but as a vehicle to advocate for the ecological importance of mangroves to coastal communities.
The project has since grown beyond the typical two-year IEx timeline. The team participated in NUSC’s Impact Incubator programme, secured seed funding and through workshops and public booths, has continued to develop the jelly and fostered a community deeply invested in mangrove conservation.
From idea to product – Richelle (second from right) and her team, bringing Jembrana Jelly to life.
A Community That Embraces
When back-to-back classes ended in the day, it was back to residential duties or event planning for the many activities Richelle had taken on. The demands were not just physical and academic – being a Residential Assistant, Community Life Director and interest group head meant showing up emotionally and mentally, too.
But through it all, Richelle never felt that she needed to undertake all of these by herself. “I never felt that I didn’t have anyone,” she says. “I never felt truly, truly alone.” The support was often found in small, ordinary moments – a shared meal in the dining hall, a spontaneous supper run, the heart-to-heart talks that ran past midnight. “My NUSC friends and seniors always checked in on my well-being,” she recalls. The community she had spent four years building turned out to be the same one holding her up. It is, she thinks, one of the things that makes NUSC distinct – not just the opportunities it offers, but the people who show up for you along the way.
Richelle (second from right) with her friends during her GEx (Global Experience) Programme in Nagoya, Japan. GEx is one of NUSC’s flagship programmes.
Ask Richelle how four years at NUSC has changed her, and she reaches for a single word: indomitable.
Each obstacle she encountered only deepened her belief in her own tenacity. And with every new role, every new community, every new experience NUSC placed in her path, she came to understand herself – her strengths, her passions, her purpose – a little more clearly.
Beyond attaining her degree, Richelle graduates from NUSC with the world’s first edible mangrove jelly she helped invent, a community she helped shape, and a quiet but unshakeable conviction to better the world.
