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By CHULEEPORN ARAMNET
THE NATION
Published on September 6, 2010
Mahidol University (MU) is improving its infrastructure in a bid to upgrade itself as the "University of Choice" and the first university Thai students want to enter, its president Clinical Professor Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn MD said last week.
Piyasakol made these remarks in a speech on new visions for MU's 35th anniversary.
He said Mahidol targeted to reach international standards and be one of the country's top research universities, with aca-demic quality, a creative studying atmosphere and activities, and well-rounded graduates with vol-unteer's mindset.
Being the University of Choice, the president said, "cream of the crop" stu-dents would choose to fur-ther their stud-ies and conduct research at MU. So, the country could attract elite students, who would surely benefit foreign countries with useful research work if they stud-ied abroad, to study and help their homeland. To lure them to study locally, MU needed to have high enough capacity to draw them in.
He said MU's lecturers and students would have to conduct research in communities together with local people.
MU had extended its curricu-lum to cover all fields. It focused on producing good and quality graduates able to live and work with others in society, he said.
"The university council has approved MU to provide 70 per cent of its areas as green areas. MU has recruited knowledgeable lecturers, provided well-equipped laboratories, easy Internet access, comfortable dormitories, and had freshmen in different fields learn living and studying together. In addition, its herbal garden will be turn into the most beautiful natural park in Bangkok and neighbouring provinces. A large concert hall will be also available for hosting graduation ceremonies and for students to show their musical performanc-es," he said.
Despite infrastructure improvement, tuition fees would not be raised, he insisted.
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