Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) was awarded a 5-star rating for its MyRA (Malaysia Research Assessment) assessment during the MyRA® Star Rating Awards Ceremony 2020, which was officiated by Dato’ Dr Noraini Ahmad, Minister of Higher Education, in Putrajaya recently.

UMT Vice Chancellor Professor Dato’ Dr Nor Aieni Mokhtar said she was proud of the recognition accorded and grateful for the achievement attained.

“I’m grateful to the Almighty God for this recognition. I’m proud of the achievement attained by our academicians and researchers. This 5-star award means a lot to UMT as this is a special award to us for our drastic improvement from a 4-star in 2016. This award is the results of everyone’s efforts at UMT, and the success is to be shared by all of us.”

UMT set a high target for the MyRA and the goal was included in UMT’s Strategic Plan 2018-2022.

“Throughout my holding of UMT Vice Chancellor’s post, I have always emphasized the importance of MyRA achievement to everyone at UMT. If we look at UMT’s MyRA achievement since its introduction in 2010, UMT consistently achieved 3-star rating until 2016, except for 2011 where it only achieved 2-star rating”. 

Therefore, as Vice Chancellor, I emphasized on excellent achievement in Research, Development, Commercialization, and Innovation (RDCI) so that our MyRA rating could be improved to 4-star in 2017 and 5-star in 2018. UMT should not be doing the same thing every year and expect improved results. UMT became more proactive and introduced a number of interventions and more strategic planning. Throughout 2017 and 2018, RDCI ecosystem was enhanced to allow for better achievement, and it was done by design to optimize the resources at UMT. UMT must move as one family with a shared vision. An organization’s asset is its people. Their support and commitment were important to ensure the interventions and initiatives could be carried out as planned to realize UMT’s goal of attaining MyRA 5-star in 2018.”

UMT is alert of the 21^st Century globalization challenges. As a comprehensive university, UMT has played a more proactive role to position itself at the global arena so that it is more well-known by the others as a competitive university.

UMT’s expertise is recognized at the international level when it managed to increase the intake of international postgraduate students and establish research collaborations with overseas institutions. Indirectly, UMT researchers were able to obtain international grants and published articles in high-impact journals, such as Nature, Nature Ecology and Evolution, and Nature Communications.

The Ministry of Higher Education introduced an instrument to measure the achievement of all Malaysian universities in RDCI, known as Malaysia Research Assessment (MyRA). Therefore, the emphasis must be placed on RDCI as its results are the measuring sticks used by all the universities in the world to ensure their global visibility is attained.

RDCI is the heart of all universities. To assist UMT with being a comprehensive university focusing on marine science and aquatic resources, its academicians must discover new knowledge through research activities and share it with students, communities, and industries so as to improve the country’s economy and the people’s wellbeing.

Hence, it is important for all at UMT to move together in unison in enhancing the inputs, outputs, and impact of RDCI activities to enable UMT’s achievement is recognized not just at the national level but at the international arena.

UMT’S STRATEGY TOWARDS MYRA®’S 5-STAR

In 2018, UMT instructed academic responsibility centres (faculties and research institutes) to determine the target for each of MyRA’s indicators to help fulfil UMT top management’s goal of attaining MyRA® 5-star rating.

The score for each section in the MyRA instrument was determined by design to obtain the score for UMT MyRA that was decided by UMT’s top management based on the strength of the researchers at each academic responsibility centre so as to ensure that the target for each indicator could be met. 

The support system was also enhanced to enable new programmes to be introduced, the processes to be improved, and new policies to be introduced to improve UMT’S RDCI achievement and subsequently attain MyRA 5-star rating. Among the initiatives carried out was the introduction of special fund to enable active researchers to conduct their research and produce intended outputs. Thrust 4-Research and Innovation Excellence in UMT’s Strategic Plan 2018-2022 was planned to be congruous with MyRA indicators. Research progress monitoring process was implemented to help researchers meet the objectives and produced targeted outputs.

In addition, UMT implemented knowledge transfer programmes more strategically and systemically to be in line with the impact of RDCI, and research collaborations with the industries and international agencies were strengthened to ensure the continuity of the partnerships and the production of intended outputs.

With these initiatives, UMT will move in tandem with the ministry’s aspiration of focusing on research, innovation, and commercialization in an effort to improve the quality of each university.

For further information:

Sayed Mohd Tamimuddin Bin Sayed Ibrahim

Special Officer to Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation)

Universiti Malaysia Terengganu

Tel : 013-9302777

Published by:

Corporate Communication Centre

Universiti Malaysia Terengganu