First Involvement

In the case for SMU at that time, it was really a start-up. The planning team in SMU was still negotiating with MOE [Ministry of Education] on the start-up funding just to get it going. And the negotiation was just going on, and but meanwhile, there were people on the payroll. So fortunately they had some funding from the original institution that was supposed to create SMU and that kept it going for a few months, in fact, nearly a year. That sustained it until subsequently, when the start-up funding was agreed with MOE [Ministry of Education] that is when I have already joined the first thing I did was to cut a cheque and paid off the other one and we are completely on our own. So that was the first phase of the funding and that is how we started recruiting our initial set of faculty and staff to get the university ready for the launch.