How RS is working with students

Singapore’s people and businesses are a hub of innovation and technology. One of the educational institutions contributing to this is Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP).

NP is nestled in west Singapore. Having been founded with only 116 students in 1963, today it has more than 15,500 students spread across its campus. NP offers courses that run through its 9 academic schools – Business & Accountancy, Design & Environment, Film & Media Studies, Health Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences, InfoComm Technologies, Interdisciplinary Studies, Life Science & Chemical Technology, and Engineering. Having grown substantially since its humble beginnings, NP has become one of the cornerstones of Singapore’s thriving academic community.

(Image 1: NP aerial view)

Over the years RS Components has developed a close relationship with NP with both the educators and students. Through this relationship, a formal RS University Partnership was put in place to increase NP’s awareness in RS and vice versa. The partnership has enabled NP students to have internships with RS.

 As part of one of the internship programmes with RS, students from the Business school needed to build a business plan for product launches or provide business solutions. Through this two-way cooperation, the idea of introducing a NP RS Shop arose. The concept was simple – to enable any student to purchase products at competitive prices and delivered in quickest possible time.

The shop project was taken on by 2 business students – A lot of responsibility for 2 young entrepreneurs. The project was juxtaposition of planning and guidance. They needed to come up with a business plan and manage the shop locally in one of the busy areas of the NP’s campus under the supervision of NP’s Co-Op.

(Image 2: NP RS Shop)

All the support, resources and guidance was provided by RS to enable the students to grow and maximise their business knowledge acquired from NP’s Business school. Throughout the process RS guided the students and always looked for solutions in the face of adversity.

As a result of those students, annually, new groups of business students come on board to manage the NP RS Shop. This provides students with a great balance of business theory and practice. Consequently and due to its successful implementation, there are no signs of this business model changing any time soon. The shop is going from strength to strength.

(Image 3: NP Business Students)

At the helm of the shop’s success is Eileen Yap (RS Corporate Account Manager). On the frontend Eileen has a simple approach, it should “provide convenience on reaching out to regular items instantly”. However, on the backend, a lot of work has been done to work with students to maximise their potential. 

For starters, Eileen has found a new approach to logistics with the help of NP’s staff and students. Let’s imagine: You go to the NP RS Shop counter and order a product that is not available in stock. Usually, you would expect the product to be delivered at the counter where you ordered it from. However through innovative thinking, staff and students alike can now order products and choose to have it delivered to their door step within the campus or at the shop’s counter.   

In terms of student development, Eileen has had to personally tutor the stream of new business students on the different parts and components that typically makeup an engineering portfolio because RS mainly services engineers in academia. This sort of tutoring has improved overtime as data on the educators and students purchase habits has grown. However, for a business student learning about different circuit boards and resistors for the first time, Eileen still takes the time out to teach about the different products.

It’s clear that a lot of thought, time and effort has been put into making the NP RS Shop a success. So when asked what Eileen thoughts on the shop are, it’s clear that it goes beyond than just providing a service. In Eileen’s words “it’s a unique endeavour to nurture entrepreneurial talents in a campus environment […] and to help raise the importance and awareness of engineering”.