An artist's rendering of SIT campus court from the waterfront.
The Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) celebrated its upcoming Punggol campus in a ceremony and struck strategic partnerships with Oracle and Salesforce to offer an industry-focused curriculum and enhance its research capabilities.
The university marked a major construction milestone with a topping-out ceremony, which signals the ‘advanced’ progress of the building – this means that the campus is approximately two-thirds completed and is expected to be operational by the second half of 2024.
Ahead of its opening, SIT forged partnerships with Oracle and Salesforce to support upcoming initiatives like Living Labs and Social Innovation Projects (SIP), which is aimed at offering students and researchers the opportunity to explore real-life projects both in and off campus.
“The move to Punggol presents many opportunities for SIT to differentiate and strengthen our education offerings,” said SIT President Professor Chua Kee Chaing. “Our Living Labs represent our commitment to transform learning by amplifying the capabilities of our students, faculty and researchers.
“Our partnerships with industry leaders like Oracle and Salesforce further enhance authentic and active applied learning opportunities for our students.”
Oracle partnership
Oracle will help SIT establish Living Labs with features like a digital ‘sandbox’ platform that enables students, researchers and industry partners to collaborate on business solutions and innovation.
SIT will leverage Oracle’s expertise and technologies such as database management and cloud computing to collect, analyse and use data to address key business sustainability issues and create innovative technological applications to increase business productivity.
The collaboration also provides opportunities for the co-development of pre-employment training (PET) and continuing education and training (CET) curriculum content through the integration of Oracle Academy’s offerings.
SIT will utilise Oracle Academy's learning resources in artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to support faculty and students in applied learning and research, including students’ SIP activities.
In addition, eligible individuals will be able to participate in SIT’s Industrial masters and Industrial doctorate programmes and work on Oracle projects.
“Oracle has been operating in Singapore for over 30 years and we are constantly looking at new ways to enhance our local innovation ecosystem and nurture a pool of talent that are experts in new technologies,” said Chua Horng Shya, managing director of Oracle Singapore.
“We’re excited to collaborate with SIT to leverage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for the first of such digital sandboxes, as well as Oracle Academy training offerings.”
Salesforce partnership
Meanwhile, Salesforce will help SIT set up a learning lab to train up to 50 students per academic year to develop applications and prototypes that aim to benefit social service agencies. This is Salesforce’ first learning lab in Asia Pacific.
Specialists from Salesforce will serve as facilitators and mentors to students in their social innovation projects (SIP) via online or in-person engagements.
Also, students will get to learn industry best practices and apply their knowledge to CRM projects for actual customers.
The partnership will also extend to SIT's CET offerings under the university’s competency-based stackable micro-credentials (CSM) pathway.
Furthermore, working adults can take up courses to pursue upskilling opportunities and build CRM competencies to enhance their expertise.
Those in the programme will also have access to the Salesforce ecosystem of partner and customer organisations for work attachment opportunities.
The collaboration is enabled by Salesforce Trailhead Academy, which aims to empower individuals and businesses to build and validate in-demand digital skills through expert-led learning programmes, role-based credentials and workforce development strategies.
“Democratising access to digital skills education is a core tenet for Salesforce, and this partnership with SIT further advances our commitment to create pathways for the future generation of our workforce into tech roles,” said Sujith Abraham, senior VP and GM, ASEAN at Salesforce.
“By developing solutions for real-world problems social service agencies are facing, this partnership goes a long way in helping non-profits transform digitally and deliver greater impact to their beneficiaries.”
SIT’s students and staff who are currently based at the six campuses in Dover Drive and polytechnics across Singapore will move to the Punggol campus in phases, with classes commencing in September 2024 for the new academic year.
