The Vice-Chancellor’s New Year Address is a UTM legacy, published in a book format annually since 2009. This legacy involves documenting plans, actions, implementation, and anticipated challenges; mapping of previous year’s achievements; and reinforcing UTM’s aspirations, through selected themes for a particular year, to the entire university community including students. In addition, this book acts as a medium to disseminate the university’s development and achievements to its external stakeholders. As a member of the UTM community, we need to understand the vision and mission to be accomplished and fully embrace them. We need to move collectively towards achieving the ultimate goal of positioning UTM among the top 50 universities in the world in the field of science, technology and engineering by the year 2020. The theme of the 2014 New Year Address is ‘consensus, inclusiveness and engagement’. We will strategise our actions by giving due attention to the views of all parties concerned. Each view will be duly considered, allowing the whole university community to give constructive views so as to enable continuous improvements to be implemented. Indeed, the spirit of consensus, inclusiveness and engagement has been envisioned not only by the current leadership of the university, but also by past leaders, albeit in the form of distinctive and unique implementation modes. We are indebted to past UTM leaders and community for their innumerable contributions in developing a culture of consensus, inclusiveness and engagement, the impact of which is clearly felt at this point in time. Indeed, this is an invaluable asset that should be collectively preserved and nurtured to ensure UTM continues to become distinct and renowned.
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