UniMy accepts 15-year old for an early start to computer science and engineering course

Little children who are quiet are sometimes up to mischief behind their parents back. However, much to his parents’ chagrin, breaking up his Rubik’s Cube, constantly emptying out the entire bath water only to refill it again and taking apart his toy trains were some of the ways Channan Loh was learning the concept of cause and effect from a very young age.

Today at 15, Channan is making head-way as the youngest amongst 24 students and in the entire university to be accepted into University Malaysia of Computer Science & Engineering’s (UniMy) Foundation in Computing and Engineering programme.

Joining his 17 year old peers, Channan was able to pass the rigorous entry requirements set by Unimy’s partner, University of Melbourne’s (UoM) School of Engineering despite being homeschooled and had even impressed Yayasan UniMy enough to score him a full scholarship.

According to his mother, Mrs Loh, “My eldest son was having chronic asthma and the teachers kept asking me to keep him home from school. After six months in primary one, I decided home schooling was a better solution.

“As Channan and his other 5 siblings came along, I continued home schooling the children. To be honest, Channan was never an A student and neither was it my intention to push any child to achieve academic milestones or set any ridiculous time frame. I was just taught to look at the gifting in each child.”

Mrs Loh who was a secondary teacher for five years and later a head-hunter for the IT industry laments that in her experience, she saw many ‘A’ students struggling in their careers. She adds that what society wants and the workforce required was not in sync with the current education system.

Hence, Channan’s parents’ main philosophy was to prepare their children for life by instilling God’s word and ensuring that they were raised on three important elements, namely responsibility, integrity and life-skills; as opposed to preparing them for university.

Mrs Loh explains that by teaching these virtues, it helped them to be responsible in their studies and show integrity in their work, plus having life-skills was crucial in earning an income. So what makes Channan click?

In the Loh household, Channan was termed the ‘rubbish manager’. His job was to clear the rubbish and sweep or mop the floors. However Mrs Loh noticed Channan did his chores meticulously and by chance came to the conclusion that he was a detailed person.

Although a quiet child, Channan was curious and was drawn towards experiments. As a hobby, Channan would fixed old phones and sell them to his father and friends for extra income.

When young, Channan’s gift for science and math became apparent when he was randomly entered into a brain builder math competition and scored a distinction.

On his 15th birthday, Channan was excited to have been given a hand phone to which he was able to experiment with flashing which meant crashing the entire original software platform of the phone, rebuilding it and then seeing if it would work faster than before. But being the smart kid that he was, he would ensure that the phone was still under the manufacturer’s warranty in case he got it wrong.

She explains, “Channan sat in with his brother as the eldest was doing his O-levels and as such he managed to complete the course work in tandem. Initially I wanted Channan to just complete his O-levels and take a year off helping me with the rest of the children.

However, Channan found his element in computer science and concurrently we were informed by a friend in IBM that UniMy had top notch lecturers, and church friends informed us of the scholarship while another parent was impressed with Unimy’s accreditation with the University of Melbourne. Hence, collectively with these aspects coming together, Channan was eager to try out and move on quickly in a field of study that he was passionate about.”

According to Mohd Ridzuan Ahmad, Channan’s lecturer and program coordinator, “Chanan has prepared himself well in advance for this field of study by having a curious mindset and the love of learning and exploring concepts in science and experiments.

His innate interest gives him the passion and as such, he is able to take on the rigour of this academic course set at such a high standard as required by UniMy and the University of Melbourne.

“In class, Chanan can grasp complex concepts and absorb contents quickly. He is able to balance class activities, exams and group work well by having good social interaction with peers who are older than him. At the end of the day, his classmates have now looked past the age difference and see Chanan for who he is; a student whose mental quotient is on par with the rest of them.

“We love having Chanan here and in fact, he has another young 16-year-old friend studying in UniMy with him. UniMy is all about attracting young minds that are passionate about this field of study and we want all Malaysians to know that regardless of age, as long as you can put in the hard work and show your passion, UniMy has a place for you.”

Set up in collaboration with the Malaysian government, UniMy is an ICT boutique university that aims to be the breeding ground for producing highly qualified and entrepreneurial batch of computer science and computer engineering talent for the 21st century.

In line with the spirit of education par excellence, knowledge transfer and sharing in a borderless world, UniMy’s partnership with the University of Melbourne will afford local students the opportunity to embark on a 6-month industrial training attachment with technology partners abroad. The collaboration allows UniMy undergraduate students to undertake their final semester project in Melbourne whilst final semester University of Melbourne electronic engineering students will be sent here to complete their practical module.

To date, UniMy is the only university in Malaysia that has created a total ecosystem in ICT education by partnering with the world’s top IT companies and global industry partners such as Microsoft, IBM, EC Council, Dell, Huawei and Autodesk to ensure that graduates are well prepare to enter the job market on a winning start.

The university has also established a High Performance Computing Centre to culminate ideas, research and innovations and promote commercialization this year.

To learn more about UniMy, visit this link