The Department has established
and continues to maintain close links with a variety
of local and international organisations, including
universities, professional associations, and funding
agencies. Among the organisations involved over the
past two decades are the East-West Center, Harvard-Yenching
Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), Japan's National
Museum of Ethnology, WHO, UNESCO, IDRC, the Joint Centre
for Asia-Pacific Studies (Canada), Volkswagen Foundation,
Asia Foundation and Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Many
of these ties were forged in collaborative research
projects.
Several staff members are serving in
various capacities in professional organisations such
as the International Sociological Association and the
International Advisory Panel on Academic and Applied
Study of Forced Migration. In addition, some staff members
serve as research consultants to government ministries
and other agencies, among which are the Ministry of
Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Community Development,
and the Institute of Policy Studies. There are also
several staff members involved in various national-level
committees namely, the Cost Review Committee; Chinese
Development AassistanceCouncil (CDAC); the Board of
Film Censors and the Advisory Panel for Publications,
the Ministry for Information and the Arts (MITA); National
Library, and Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS)
Programme Advisory Committee.
Sociology Outreach Programme
(SCOPE)
In 1992, the Department initiated an outreach programme
to establish links with the junior colleges. The purpose
of this programme is to publicise Sociology as a discipline
and reach out to potential students. During its first
year, the programme committee organised a pre-university
seminar that attracted about 170 junior college students
and teachers who attended the one-day seminar-cum-workshop
held on the NUS campus. Since 1993, Department staff
members have appeared at various junior colleges to
introduce the Department's curriculum and courses, and
to give talks on Sociology. A second pre-university
seminar, which had “Understanding Singapore Society”
as its theme, was conducted in 1997. It too saw the
enthusiastic participation of more than a hundred students
and teachers from the various junior colleges in Singapore.
More recently, in May 2004, the Department established
the “Sociology Project Workshop” to cater to the many
junior college students seeking advice on substantive
and methodological issues relating to their team research
projects.
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