Weekend Commitment: Supporting a SPACE Final Year Project Student

Weekends are typically seen as a time for rest and personal renewal, especially for most employees. However, for academicians and lecturers, weekends can often be just another extension of our academic responsibilities. While Saturday and Sunday are officially non-working days, it is not uncommon for teaching-related duties to spill over into the weekend due to packed schedules on weekdays.

Today was one such instance. I had to carefully balance my time between personal, family, and social commitments in order to accommodate a mock presentation session for one of my Final Year Project (FYP) students from the SPACE program, UTM’s part-time undergraduate program for working adults.

Given my full-day commitments, I informed my student, who is currently working at a major oil refinery in Pasir Gudang, that we would conduct the mock session later at night, after I returned from attending the Maulidur Rasul Kuliah at Masjid Taman Pulai Indah. We began the mock presentation at 10:25 p.m. and concluded by 11:00 p.m. I listened attentively to his presentation and provided detailed, constructive feedback focused on both the content and delivery aspects. I advised him to revise the slides and submit the improved version to me by tomorrow for final review. I sincerely hope that the revised presentation will reflect significant improvement—InsyaAllah.

Earlier in the day, I also attended a wedding ceremony in Pasir Gudang, following an invitation from a former colleague at Mewaholeh Industries Sdn Bhd, my previous workplace. It was a meaningful social occasion that allowed me to reconnect with old friends, former students, and fellow professionals.

Days like today remind me that while weekends are meant for rest, they can also offer valuable opportunities for mentoring, reflection, and nurturing long-term academic relationships, especially with committed students who juggle work and study in parallel.

#20242025 Day 012

#Saturday

Plant Design Project SKKC4834 for Supervisors

I conducted a briefing together with Dr. Azizul and Dr. Zarina for all supervisors at 2.15pm. We briefed on how the PDP will be conducted this coming semester. The event went well. Alhamdulillah

 

 

Day 5: Chairman/Panel for Undergraduate Research Presentation + Plant Design Project Coordination Meeting

Today is a very full pact day. First hald of the day was the final presentation for Undergraduate Research Project. Two of my students presented in this event. At the same time, I am one of the panels and also the chairperson for my session. This event took place from 9am to 12.30pm, followed by the announcement ceremony for the best presenters from each session. Surprisingly one of my students, Nasyitah won the best presenter in the Modelling and simulation session. Congrats!!!

Second of the day was the Plant Design Project Coordination meeting. We have to plan for the coming semester. There will be about 150 students going to pursue this course and there are a mountain of tasks in terms of planning and coordination work to be done. This was from 2.30pm to 5.10pm at Bilik Mesyuarat Dekan.

 

Read all my “1 Official Task Per Day Record Challenge for 2020” —> https://people.utm.my/zakiyamani/category/1-activity-1-day/

 

Testing my Heating Mantle Capabilities

Checking and testing in progress. It has not been used for quite some time and now I am checking it out to see if it is OK and can meet the desired temperature I wanted to launch my new research.

It should be able to reach 500 oC. Today’s experiment showed that it reached 360 oC, merely based on the limitation of my mercury thermometer.

 

Kursus Persediaan Problem-Based Learning (PBL) for Low Carbon Education in Iskandar Malaysia Bil. 5/2019.

Nampaknya cikgu-cikgu yang terlibat kebanyakannya dah boleh mengendalikan PBL di sekolah masing-masing. Kita dari Center of Engineering Education (CEE), UTM bantu guide dan pantau sikit-sikit. Good jobs teachers. Alah bisa tegal biasa!

Trainers/Facilitators : Prof. Dr. Khairiyah Mohd Yusof, Dr. Syed Helmi, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fatin Aliah Phang, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ts. Mohd Kamaruddin Abd Hamid& Zaki Yamani Zakaria.

Debut PBL – LCS at Sekolah Menengaah Kebangsaan Taman Sutera, Johor Bahru

It is the first time that Sekolah Menengaah Kebangsaan Taman Sutera (SMKTS), Johor Bahru participated in the Problem Based Learning (PBL) for Low Carbon Society (LCS) education in their school. About 32 form 2 students participated in this program which is conducted on every Wednesday morning from 7.30am to 9.15AM. It was my first time entering and monitoring the PBL activity in this school.

Further information about this has been reported in my FB account: https://www.facebook.com/zakiyz/posts/10157529655544973

Final Presentation Briefing for Plant Design Project

Today I briefly presented to the Final Year Students taking Plant Design Project the Final Presentation Briefing. Vital information about the format of final report format, final presentation format, arrangement of chapters for reports and others were presented. The session took place from 2pm to 3pm at DK5 N11a. After my presentation, Prof Rozainee delivers his talk titled Professional Project Presentation. His presentation was awesome and energetic!

 

Industry Supervisor Meeting with Plant Design Project Students

Today, there were 2 ISV meetings. Details are as follows:
Team 1, 2, 3 (9am-12pm) – Nurasyikin, Bilik Professor Pelawat, N01a
Team 20, 21, 22, 23 (2pm-5pm) – Ezamshah, Bilik Mesyuarat Fakulti, N01.
Both meetings went smooth and awesome. Alhamdulillah.

Mari Kita Raikan Para Graduan Dan Tetamu Sempena Majlis Konvokesyen Ke-62

Following are the speech from UTM Vice-Chancellor in conjunction of the 62nd UTM Convocation…

I hope that all of you are doing well and in good health.

As we all know, the 62nd Convocation Ceremony will take place on the 29thApril until 30th April 2019. As I have shared during the last convocation, to us (as staff) , the convocation is a routine ceremony happening twice a year. However, to the graduates and their families, the convocation ceremony is an occasion much awaited, which is a proud and meaningful moment to celebrate their success.

Therefore, in conjunction with this special event, I would urge the whole UTM community to celebrate this memorable occasion with the graduates and their families. We should appreciate this happy moment in celebration with students and their families. As we frequently mention, the whole campus eco-system is involved in nurturing the students.As such, I would like to invite everyone in UTM community at all levels to give the best to all our guests.

Let them feel our friendly culture. Let us pray that this UTM Convocation Ceremony will run smoothly with much joy and happiness. Lastly, I would like to express my utmost appreciation to everyone who are involved directly and indirectly in making this convocation and all other programmes taking place in conjunction with this convocation Ceremony a successful one.

 

Thank you.

Wahid Omar

UTM Vice-Chancellor

HTGYE Mock Interview

Today, I have an interview session with final year students of Chemical Engineering. This is actually a Mock Interview to prepare the final students for interview when they start applying for work in a few months time. 15 students were interviewed in 4 sessions. I was the interviewer along side Dr. Dayang. It was an interesting session and we provided precious comments and inputs for the students.