‘Family is the source of strength’ says Recipient of President’s Award

Cyberjaya, 12 September 2017 – The recipient of Multimedia University’s (MMU) President Award, Elyn Kuan Yie Ming, called out to her fellow graduates to ever be grateful to their parents and families, because they have made it possible for the students to further their education and pursue their respective dreams.

Parents begin teaching students about developing strength and perseverance long before they enter university, by teaching their children how to overcome obstacles and hardships at personal or academic levels, she said.

“After I got my SPM (Sijil Peperiksaan Malaysia) result I was unsure where to go. To study in Malaysia or to go oversea. I came from a humble family and my family member suffers severe illness, and that even with the scholarship offered I decided to stay. I stayed because I have always believed that family should always come first before anything that I can work hard for."

“People around me once asked, did I just let go of a golden ticket? Yet I told myself I’m gonna make the best out of what I have. Because I strongly believe that it is not where we go that makes the difference but what we do that change our lives,” the Bachelor of Accounting (Honours) graduate said these during her acceptance speech at MMU’s 18th Convocation Ceremony here.

Born in Melaka in 1994, Elyn is the youngest among her child in a family of four. She completed her Accounting programme with a CGPA of 3.98, an outstanding achievement. Elyn recounted her background in excelling in her studies. She repeatedly asserted that her family gave her the strength to go above and beyond average, starting with simple things, such as making decisions.

Since there is no right or wrong decisions, she contends, what is important is that one overcomes fear and just make a decision so that progress could be made. If the decision yields poor results, then amend what needs amending and move on.

This, combined with hard work, will yield good results. Elyn shared that although she decided to study at a local university instead of going abroad, her dedication enabled her to win the World Prize of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW), outdoing thousands of other students who went abroad.

Elyn was one of the 4,047 other graduands in the fields of Engineering, Information Technology, Cinematic Arts, Creative Multimedia, Life Sciences, Management, Accounting and Law at the diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels. Of the total, 283 were expatriates, while the remaining 3,764 were local graduates. In addition, the ceremony saw the graduation of 507 diploma students from Multimedia College (MMC), MMU’s subsidiary.

At the ceremony, a couple of husband and wife, Mr. Segaran Veeraya, 49, and Dr. Sharmini Gopinathan, 44, has successfully reached heights through their completion of Masters and Philosophy Doktor (PhD) and graduated together. On top of that, there were two disabled students Chan Wei Jian and Ahmad Amin Abd Rashid received their scrolls of Diploma in Information Technology, whereby a tinge of sadness marked as one of the graduates, Pan Kok Keong from the Faculty of Business, had passed away recently.