Asst. Prof. Dr. Niwat Keawpradub, President of Prince of Songkla University, disclosed the university’s operations and projects planned for 2021. Featuring plans to spend more than 5,200 million baht to drive projects for developing the southern region and its people in the areas of public health, technology, innovation, agriculture, and integration into the global community, four main projects will accomplish these goals, as explained below.
The Andaman International Health Center Project at Phuket Campus is to become a specialized medical center that will accommodate Thai and foreign patients with complicated diseases. Additionally, the center will produce personnel in public health and health science, while a modern international dental center will reduce the travelling cost for locals to receive dental treatment, saving at least 135 million baht per year, and increasing the value of tourism by introducing a medical aspect. These measures can potentially yield an annual revenue of at least 1,600 million baht to the nation. Similarly, Surat Thani Campus has a social and economic development project at Thung Sai Chai: the Innovative College for Agriculture, Marine and Coastal Resources. This project will involve aquaculture, coastal fisheries, the fishing industry, cash crops and farming.
Regarding human resources development, technology literacy and modernization, the university will create the PSU Open Mobility project to develop human resources in accordance with the country’s needs by changing the management within the organization in order to provide flexibility in curriculum management. The project is expected to contribute to advanced research-generating skills and create new innovations of national and international impact, along with an increase in capacity to upgrade the quality at the international level in every mission for students, personnel, and the community in general. Moreover, Prince of Songkla University will also create a digital science project to foster innovations for economic development, social and human resources development, and an environment with the aim of developing human resources with digital skills and competencies. The project will be part of a larger system of researching and developing new innovations to answer national issues by relying on the readiness of human resources, digital technology tools, equipment and systems, along with cooperation among various agencies both in the country and abroad.
Prince of Songkla University, established 54 years ago, is the first regional university in the South, with a strong focus on southern development, building up knowledge and innovation for development, and solving problems in the South and the nation as a whole. Of the nearly two hundred thousand PSU alumni, 80% work in the southern region, 15% work in the Bangkok area, and the rest are distributed among various sectors, including working abroad. In the year 2021, Prince of Songkla University set a vision of operations to focus on human resources development, relying on the extensive knowledge and innovation of its five campuses in Pattani, Hat Yai, Phuket, Surat Thani and Trang, to serve as the foundation for the development of science and technology, health sciences, education, humanities and social sciences. While having different major faculties, each campus displays the same characteristics: strength in teaching and learning, and in its various real-life applications, focusing on social benefits and work that span the entire world.
