Fann Zhi Jie - President's Award For Teachers Recipient 2023

Our educators continue to do SP proud! This year, Fann Zhi Jie is the prestigious President's Award for Teachers (PAT) Recipient.

A Senior Manager at SP's Department of Industry & Partnerships, Fann Zhi Jie strongly believes in learning, growing together, and thriving as a community.

His most outstanding achievement to date is the Society of Interior Designers, Singapore Student Chapter (SIDS SC). For five years, he taught at SIDS, which began as a professional body for Singaporean and Singapore-based Interior Designers in 1994 and eventually grew into Singapore's leading interior design body. They invited him to join their Council and set up a Student Chapter to develop and support young talent in the interior design industry, and Mr Fann agreed without hesitation.

In 2019, he launched the Student Chapter with 35 students from across the four Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) that offered design courses. And today, over 800 IHL students are active in the Chapter.

The compassionate educator has always made it a point to contribute to the broader community to make a difference in other people's lives. To foster a sense of community for students of varying backgrounds and technical competencies, Zhi Jie introduced student-led peer-to-peer learning to level students' computer-aided design competency. These lessons empowered and motivated his students, with the more advanced ones taking ownership of planning and conducting sessions, whilst those who were weaker felt encouraged by their peers who gave them the necessary support to progress in their learning.This dedication he has to his students translated well when he worked on the Pedagogy for the Professions (P4P) Critiques as a core member, where he piloted the Reflect|Plan|Do|Check (RPDC) framework to scaffold learning across the design stages and cultivated critical thinking and self-directed learning.

The pilot led to a versatile use of the framework according to students' varying needs. Advanced students could articulate the gaps in their learning, derive ways forward and execute them before the critique; less confident students were provided more guidance before executing their plans. The approach left no one behind. Instilled from Year 1, it also reduced design process barriers, and allowed students to be at ease throughout the iterative process and rounds of feedback, thereby building their confidence.

Before being seconded to INP in April this year, Zhi Jie was a Course Chair at the School of Architecture & the Built Environment for 10 years. Today, he coordinates and leads SP's internationalisation efforts, helps with SP's internship programme, and engages the industry as the Account Manager of the Digital Building Innovation Centre (DBIC). He also supports the SP alumni community and oversees the SPiNOFF start-up initiative to elevate students to industry.