The Federation of Malaysia comprises Peninsular Malaysia and the states of Sabah and

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1 MALAYSIA AND APEX UNIVERSITY The Federation of Malaysia comprises Peninsular Malaysia and the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Located between 2º and 7º north of the Equator, Peninsular Malaysia is separated from the states of Sabah and Sarawak by the South China Sea. To the north of Peninsular Malaysia is Thailand while its southern neighbour is Singapore. Sabah and Sarawak are north of Indonesia in Borneo while Sarawak also shares a border with Brunei. Bahasa Melayu (Malay) is the official language, but English is widely spoken in Malaysia. Ethnic groups also have their own languages and dialects. Islam is the country's official religion, but other religions are widely practiced. Malaysia is governed by a Parliamentary democracy with a bicameral legislative system. The Head of State is the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, a position that is awarded to a different State Monarch every five years and the Head of Government is the Prime Minister. Putrajaya is the new and modern administration center. To know Malaysia is to love Malaysia. A bubbling, bustling, melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony. Malays, Chinese, Indians and many other ethnic groups have lived together in Malaysia for generations. All these cultures have influenced each other, creating a truly Malaysian culture.

2 The largest ethnic groups in Malaysia are the Malays, Chinese and Indians. In Sabah and Sarawak, there are a myriad of indigenous ethnic groups with their own unique culture and heritage. Then, every races also have their own traditional foods likes Nasi Lemak for Malays, Roti Canai for Indians and Yong Tau Fu for Chineses. But the interesting part is, everyone also can eat any races food as long as their Malaysian. Multiculturalism has not only made Malaysia a gastronomical paradise, it has also made Malaysia home to hundreds of colourful festivals. It's no wonder that we love celebrating and socialising. Malaysians are very laid back, warm and friendly. Geographically, Malaysia is as diverse as its culture. There are two parts to the country, 11 states in the peninsular of Malaysia and two states on the northern part of Borneo. Cool hideaways are found in the highlands that roll down to warm, sandy beaches and rich, humid mangroves. And one of the states in the Malaysia is Penang where Penang is also very famous with its tourism places. Penang, "The Pearl of the Orient", lies off the northwestern coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The state comprises the island of Penang covering an area of about 285 sq. km and a narrow strip of approximately 760 sq. km on the mainland known as Seberang Perai (Province Wellesley) separated by a channel 3 km wide at the closest point. They are linked by the Penang Bridge and a 24-hour ferry service. Its population of more than 1

3 million represents a happy mix of the major races found in Malaysia with Malays making up 32%, the Chinese 59% and Indians 7%. The University Science Malaysia is located on the island. Just across the 3 rd longest bridge in the world, we will see the main campus for the most beautiful university in a garden. The university has been developing and expanding since its inception, which started with the enrolment of 57 science based students. Now, USM offers courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels to approximately 20,000 students. USM has also become a wellknown university locally and internationally. Since its beginning, USM has implemented a school system, as opposed to the traditional faculty system. What is unique about this system is that each school could fulfill the needs of a more focused degree in the chosen area of study and at the same time, students could have the opportunity to explore other areas of study offered by another school. The interdisciplinary approach ensures that USM, the first in the country to adopt this system, would produce trained, multi-skilled graduates.

4 USM also have three campus where the main campus is at Minden, Penang, Engineering Campus at Nibong Tebal, Penang and Health Campus at Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. It uses the concepts of hostel or college called, desasiswa to encourage student to be more independent and flexible. Another offering full-time courses likes undergraduate and postgraduate, USM also offering for distance education. For the second eldest university in Malaysia after University Malaya, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has been granted Accelerated Programme for Excellence (apex) status. With it, USM can expect hundreds of millions of ringgit in additional funding to transform it into Malaysia's first world-class university. The university that is given apex status is one that has the greatest potential among Malaysian universities to be world-class, and as such, would be given additional assistance to compete with top-ranked global institutions and with apex status, USM will be expected to move up the World University Rankings with a target of top 200 in five years' and top 100, if not top 50, by 2020.

5 USM STUDENTS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS In the academic session of 2007/2008, USM students had carry out various Sustainable Development projects such as White Coffin, Say No To Plastic, Earth Hour and Tapau Mania and so on. WHITE COFFIN CAMPAIGN The very first project was the White Coffin campaign. There was campaign in requesting students to sign up the pledge card-mypledge and to ban the use of white coffin, which is known as polystyrene due to its negative impacts to the environment and human health. Students are encouraged to eat at the cafeteria to avoid packing. Later the students come out with eco-pack to ease the problem and make it convenient for food packaging, replacing the usage of White Coffin. Next, in order not to make student being too dependent on eco-pack we encourage students to use container. This is to minimize the waste generation. Contaminated ecopack cannot be reusable but contribute to waste production. White coffin not only practice in our varsity campuses instead we also take effort to create awareness to the community. We did share our white coffin campaign at the Asian Youth Climate Change Conference, Hong Kong, July 2008, 17 Student Representative Councils from Malaysia s Universities and Institutions and also Panglima Bukit Gantang secondary school in Perak, Malaysia.

6 We received positive comments from various sectors on our white coffin campaign. We also promoted to new enroll USM student about White Coffin and everyone signed up the Mypledge. We did give out containers for free as a starter to culture the practice of using container to pack food. As a result, our effort in banning white coffin has been recognize. USM has been awarded an Award for Creative Developments in Healthy Cities 2008 from Alliance for Healthy Cities (AFHC). USM Team won Best Community Service Award for The White Coffin project at College and University Student Assembly, CUSA SAY NO TO PLASTIC CAMPAIGN After successful banned white coffin, we launch another campaign, that is Say No To Plastic. Campaign by volunteer students to create awareness among the community in campuses, they include students, staffs, lecturers and professors. In this round, eco-bag was introduced. Eco-bag is reusable and environmental friendly. This is also another effort to reduce plastic waste generation. Cooperation from stall sellers were obtained as not offering plastic bag to customer unless it is necessary. The campaign to rid the campus of disposable containers continues with Tapau Mania a brainchild of White Coffin. Tapau is a Chinese word for takeaway but is a term used by all Malaysians. This is done in a contest form. It serves as a starter to encourage students to participate and practice the use of reusable container. Stamp will be given to

7 the students who use reusable containers. Once student complete to collect all stamp, prizes will be given away. THE GREEN OFFICE PROJECT The third program is the Green Office project. Target group is working staffs and lecturers in majority and students are minority. In this project, staffs, lecturers and students are: encourage to purchase and use energy saving electronic items encourage car pooling plant more more trees / plants in the office and the surroundings adopt Recovery, Recycle and Reuse behavior save water and electricity usage Maximize paper usage don t waste paper EARTH HOUR PROGRAMME Earth Hour program was organized by World Wildlife Fund of Nature (WWF) Australia as a program which related to Global Warming Issue. In Malaysia, we, USM was the first institution that participated in this program. In Earth Hour program, we encourage students to switch off lights for one hour at their hostel. It is a small step to create awareness to the community to curb the Global Warming. Processes to organize Earth Hour Program: Meeting with top officials for discussion on safety issues

8 Publicity in campus thru banner, media etc. Cooperation and commitment from Student Residential Hall Councils commitment from students and volunteers As a result, 80 percent of the light were switch off. NATIONAL RESEARCH AND INNOVATION COMPETITION (NRIC) This is a program organized by the SRC since This competition was participated by undergraduates from all over Malaysia and it is a national level competition. They will compete in this competition based on their final year project in the academic studies. In 2008, there are almost 150 projects entered the competition in several categories. This year theme is Innovation Towards Sustainable Transformation. This theme is to promote and encourage the sustainable research among the student research. This program is supported by The Ministry of Higher Education and also sponsored by The Motorola Company as a main sponsor. CONVOCATION EXPO (CONVEX 08) This Convocation program is an annual program which organized by the SRC every year. This year is the 39 th Convocation and this year is a very challenging year for the Convocation. This year the focus is more on the Environmental Convocation which emphasizes on the Sustainable Development issue. This year we came out with some policies like No plastic bags usage, No usage of Polystyrene and usage of Cloth Banner. Besides that, lot of activities which focus on the Sustainable Development issue

9 was organized. For example, Sustainable Musical Drama, Unity Futsal, Sustainable video Competition, Sustainable research competition etc. The theme for this year Convex is Student Catalyst for the Sustainable Tomorrow. This activities actually to create awareness among the Convex visitor especially the outsider regarding the importance of Sustainable agenda in this period of time. EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT WEEK This program was organized for the very first time by us. This week actually consist of various activities to create awareness regarding this Sustainable issue among the campus residents. Lot of activities was organized by us during this whole week. For example, Futsal, Explorace, Sustainable food fair, Sustainable reach out, No Car day etc. During this week the student went out to the shops around USM to promote the White Coffin and Say No to Plastics. There lot of negative feedback from the outsider regarding these campaigns. The closing ceremony of this program was done by the Vice Chancellor of USM. The closing ceremony included with The National day countdown which lead by the VC. This program actually taught the students lot of regarding the Sustainable Development knowledge especially the application part.

10 VOLUNTEERISM: WE LEAD Through this spirit, USM has its own Secretariat of Volunteer which trained to face up the critical and others suffered. We always prepared for the sudden situations such as flood disaster, fund collecting for victims, village home-stays, and also missing children. Tropical weather which lay down at Malaysia s Longitude, caused the rainy day at the end of the year. As a result, the water level of the river increases slowly and cause flood. It become worse when the rain does not stop and the water level increases until the danger mark. This will make the situation worse and many properties will destruct and people lost their shelter. At this worse situation, our USM Disaster Bridged will move up to the places which seriously destructed to giving hands to the villagers. And at the same time, USM students and staffs keep up donating for the victims either in sort of money or things such as sugar, milk, rice and also clothes. Every year, we go through this kind of spirit and we get almost 10,000 (Ringgit Malaysia) from the donations. Our integration among other ethnics in Malaysia tightens by a program such as village home-stay. We are not only visit the villagers but we stay there for a while and get to know their life and the most important thing is to lighten up their burden by giving hands to build or prepare a public use such as mosque, wall painting, and so on. We also play some games to make it fun and enjoyable. We just want the villagers to be happy with our visit and it will leave sweet memories to them. A motivation or tuition classes conducted in order to raise the study mood among students especially for the those who will sit for their examination.

11 Sharlinie, is a 2 years old girl who is missing, get all Malaysian stuck on 9 January It really surprised us and as a USM Volunteer Secretariat, we move up our squad drastically to campaign di mana Sharlinie (where is Sharlinie). We ran our campaign at most busy highway exit at Penang and also at Ferry Jetty with 50 volunteers energy. In roughly calculation, most 2,000 copies of campaign posters spread by our squad towards public around the places. Unfortunately, Sharlinie does not come back yet and even her sign. We are still searching for her