First ever University of Reading Malaysia Open Day a roaring success
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
'Seeing the campus makes me want to work harder'
This Saturday and Sunday, we welcomed almost 2000 visitors to our brand new campus in Educity, Iskandar, including students from three local schools. The open days gave prospective students and their parents the chance to experience the campus first hand and see the facilities that we offer, including the Student Village and the EduCity Sports Complex. This was an important part of the recruitment drive for September.
Learning from our successful Open Day experiences in the UK, we combined a welcome from the Provost, Professor Tony Downes, with subject taster sessions and an expo in the Student Association space. Our current students were on hand to tell our visitors what it is like to study with UoRM and share information about the clubs and societies.
In line with Malaysian hospitality, guests were able to enjoy an English high tea.
Over the weekend we received 24 applications and lots of serious interest. During the coming week, we will be contacting attendees via phone and email to try to bring in more applications. Quote of the weekend for us was from a 13-year-old school student who said that seeing our campus made her want to work harder.
We are now busy planning to move into the building in September and welcome our first Foundation students on the 14th September. We will be offering foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in business and finance, quantity surveying, real estate, and psychology, plus English language teaching, and the Henley Business School MBA.
University staff from the UK joined those based at our Malaysia campus to put on this successful first event.
Provost, Professor Tony Downes, said, ‘Our Open Day weekend was the first time we have invited the public in to see our new campus. What a milestone to have reached, after trials and tribulations and many years of dedicated hard work by UoRM and UoR staff – so, time for a very big thank you to everyone involved. It was an amazing weekend of excitement, pride and emotion.’