Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Forster has been celebrating the University's 50th anniversary with alumni in South-East Asia during his eight-day visit to Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. 

He has also signed a prestigious scholarship agreement with Leon Choong, President of Kaplan Singapore, in honour of HRH Sirindhorn, Crown Princess of Thailand. The University is co-sponsoring a scholarship to enable a Thai student to study on one of the University's undergraduate degree courses delivered by Kaplan in Singapore. 

The University offers degrees in accounting, finance, business and management through Kaplan Singapore. During his visit to Singapore, Professor Forster meet senior representatives of Kaplan and some of our undergraduate students.

He also hosted a reception for around 40 University of Essex alumni based in the country. Earlier during his visit to Hong Kong, Professor Forster hosted a reception for 50 Essex alumni.

He is also using the visit, from 29 January to 6 February, to explore and strengthen educational and research links with universities and higher education providers in the region.

The University of Essex has more than 2,000 former students in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and more than 300 students from these areas are currently studying at our campuses in the UK.

In addition to hosting alumni receptions, Professor Forster is meeting with groups and individual alumni, to establish what ongoing links they wish to build with the University and to update them on latest developments.

He is also focusing on the needs of students from the region who wish to study at Essex.

He is holding fact-finding visits to a number of universities and colleges to discuss future collaborations. Professor Forster visited the Big Data Decision Analytics and Research Center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to share information and best practice about work in the developing area of big data analysis.

He also visited the National University of Singapore, the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and will next visit Brickfields Asia College in Kuala Lumpur, where he will sign a Memorandum of Understanding regarding our developing partnership with this prestigious law school.