As part of TUM Asia’s undergraduate degree requirements, every student is required to complete their Bachelor Thesis in the home campus of TUM after successfully completing their coursework. Each student will have the opportunity to spend two to six months living and studying in Munich as part of the Overseas Immersion Programme (OIP) experience. This experience comes before the conclusion of the 2.5 to 3 year TUM degree, offered in Singapore by TUM Asia, in collaboration with Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).
In October 2013, it was time for the 2011 cohort of Bachelor students in the Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering & Information Technology programmes to complete their Bachelor Thesis. The forty students made their way to Munich to embark on their final semester of study at TUM. It was really exciting for the students as many of them had never had the opportunity to travel to Europe.
The OIP is designed to benefit the student’s academic learning and the development of life skills, as well as provide the opportunity for these students to experience their home campus and city. For these Singaporean students, living in a different country allows them to learn soft skills that they would never learn in class. Students will pick up basic German for day-to-day conversations and learn the tact of assimilating into another culture – a key skill in today’s globalized workforce.
Two of the students who were part of this trip to Munich were Noorhashilah Binte Mohd Noh from the Electrical Engineering & Information Technology Programme and Shawn Chua from the Chemical Engineering Programme.
Living in Germany was a wonderful experience for the students. “Initially it was rough as I had to make adjustments in every aspect of my life, including getting used to the education system in Germany. But I have settled down and I am learning to be an independent worker”, Shawn commented. “The students and professors are friendly and we often bump into our professors who taught us in Singapore”, said Shilah.
Overall, the students were exposed to different lifestyles and learnt to adapt and be independent. “It has been a completely new experience for me, as I have never been to Europe, let alone study here. The independence I learnt will definitely be useful in the future workplace”.
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The full interview was published in TUM Asia’s Newsletter DIGEST, January – March 2014 Issue. Click here to view the full article.