Soh Zhi Hui, Jonathan (Graduated in ECPP in 2020)
Under the supervision of Asst Prof Kim Soojin, Jonathan wrote his final year project (FYP) entitled “Evaluating socially-conscious enterprise hawker centres in Singapore: Insights from public and private stakeholders.” In line with his research interests, he has continued to excel at working on research independently and collectively with his peers. He has done well beyond the basic requirements in the quantity and quality of his project, putting in a lot of extra research. While refining his theoretical framework and analyzing data collected, he has been always open to have any ideas that develop his current research. The research design for his FYP has been crafted with an unusual attention to detail and is being executed with care and precision. Specifically speaking, it is notable that his research paper attempted to explore and compare different stakeholders’ (including public officials, hawkers, and customers) opinions and perceptions of (un)satisfactory public service delivery in the case of social enterprise hawker centres in Singapore based on a mixed methods research design – content analysis, field observations, and semi-structured interviews. This unique exploratory study through a multi-perspective, multi-organizational view aims not only to find the critical success/risk factors associated with the management of hawker centres, but also to provide more feasible suggestions for improvement in the newly-built social enterprise hawker centres. In doing so, his current research project is reasonably expected to contribute to the literature on public policy and management in a broader manner. Furthermore, it will help assist public managers (agencies) who have struggled with socially and financially low-performing hawker centres.
While taking Asst Prof Kim Soojin's class “Statistical Foundations for Public Administration and Policy,” Jonathan demonstrated his commitment in the class and even after class, preparing quizzes and assignments that yielded important insights into his classmates and Asst Prof Kim Soojin as an instructor. He was an exceptional student for resolving complex mathematical and statistical questions each week and actively participated in the study group for the class. In addition, in Asst Prof Kim Soojin's other classes “Economic Issues for Public Decision Making,” and “Public Budgeting and Financial Management,” he has academically excelled among his classmates and always asked questions to ensure that he had a firm understanding of concepts after each class. While preparing his group presentations, he also truly impressed Asst Prof Kim Soojin as one of the top students who exhibited the qualities of a leader and has shown the ability to analyze challenging research topics, not to mention his leading in class discussions.
From 2018 to 2020, Jonathan worked as Asst Prof Kim Soojin's Undergraduate Research Assistant, ang in the research projects regarding public-private partnerships and contracting out in Singapore and other Asian countries. He always has reported the progress of his works assigned in a timely manner and tended to send Asst Prof Kim Soojin extra research earlier than each due date. In such endeavors, we strongly believe that he is an exemplar of the involved potential researcher.
As in his curriculum vitae, Jonathan has successfully maintained higher levels of education performance at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore as well as the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He also has served his military service at the Republic of Singapore Air Force as a Technician, with a patriotic desire to serve national public service. Moreover, he has actively participated in diverse co-curricular activities and volunteering including internships at the Strategy Group, Prime Minister’s Office and the Central Provident Fund Board in Singapore. Overall, his academic and personal achievements show that he is committed to his education, community, professional and global experiences, and will work hard to achieve his goals.
Zhi Hui Jonathan Soh is an extremely well-disciplined, self-motivated and a very focused individual. His nominator, Asst Prof Kim Soojin, has strong confidence that he has the substantive knowledge and pedagogical skills to research on public policy fields. He has the full support of Asst Prof Kim Soojin as a nominee of the CoHASS Alumni Award with very expectation that he will be one of the most promising graduates to do outreach for our Public Policy and Global Affairs (PPGA) and Double Major in Economics and PPGA (ECPP) programmes.
As a fresh graduate/alumni, Jonathan is currently working as a Manager at the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) of the Strategy Group in the Prime Minister’s Office. Jonathan is contributing to NPTD’s efforts across Government to ensure policies support sustainable population objectives. He has been a recipient of Nanyang Scholarship and was in the Dean’s list (AY2016-17, AY2017-18, and AY2019-20) at NTU. He seems to deserve to be nominated for this award.
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