Armed with a multi-faceted industry and academic career spanning 45 years, Professor Virginia Cha will helm the new Distinguished Senior Fellowship Programme as its Academic Director.

Named the world’s sixth Blue Zone 2.0 in August 2023, Singapore has been cited as one of the globe’s healthiest, happiest, and longest-living populations. Blue Zones are places where people live longer and enjoy better health well into old age.

Indeed, with Singapore set to attain “super-aged” status in 2026 – when one in five citizens will be aged 65 and above – the question of how people can thrive in a 100-year life with longer health spans while leading purposeful lives has become more urgent. This concept stems from a 2016 book by two London Business School professors who challenged people to rethink the traditional life stages of study, work, and retirement. The Distinguished Senior Fellowship Programme (DSFP) offered by the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education (SCALE), is a newly launched programme designed specifically to address this question. The programme will welcome its first cohort in August 2025.

Recognising that senior leaders seek purposeful engagement beyond their career pinnacle, the DSFP ― billed as the first of its kind in Asia ― provides a platform for interdisciplinary learning, personal reflection, and societal contribution, demonstrating how universities such as NUS can innovate to serve learners across the life spectrum.

“In Singapore, longevity is no longer a question but an expectation. People are living well into their 80s. Yet, socially and economically, we are still expected to retire in our mid-60s,” said Professor Virginia Cha, DSFP’s Academic Director. “In fact, we should avoid using the label ‘seniors’, and address this emergent, dominant force as ‘thrivers’.”

“More has to be done to engage this growing group of ‘thrivers’ who have accumulated a lifetime of experiences, wisdom, resources, connections; and deploy this hard-earned equity in new, meaningful ways so that our communities can benefit from this longevity dividend,” she added.

Built on the idea of “Thriving in the 100-Year Life”, which reframes ageing as a period of growth rather than decline, DSFP’s focus is not on chalking up credentials for career advancement. Instead, it seeks to help participants (known as Fellows) build a post-professional identity and make a meaningful impact on the community through group work.

“When we think of retirement, we think of people diminishing or slowing down. With the DSFP, we want to change that narrative to one of high growth and learning,” said Prof Cha. “The programme is a call for ‘thrivers’ to ‘come back to school’ and connect with their peers, forge a new identity, and gain new knowledge together.”

Prof Cha interacts with prospective participants on the side of a DSFP preview session held in November 2024.

Rethinking the role of universities

With its focus on enriching senior leaders, the DSFP also highlights the evolving role of universities.

"Universities push the boundaries of knowledge for society and are a beacon for the love of learning," said Professor Susanna Leong, Vice Provost (Masters' Programmes & Lifelong Education) and Dean of SCALE. "As our societies grow healthier and live longer, it is befitting for universities to welcome older learners back to our campus. In an institute of learning, we are all students; it is the spirit of open-minded learning and curiosity that keeps us forever young.”

The DSFP aims to achieve this through a series of modules structured around five pillars – Purpose, Exploration, Action, Community, and Health.

The Core course focuses on developing a purpose project, where Fellows work in teams to make meaningful contributions in areas such as youth development, sustainability, longevity, healthcare, the arts, and entrepreneurship. These are complemented by a Signature course comprising eight seminars that expound on various dimensions of thriving in the “100-Year Life”.

One of the Signature course seminars, titled “Elixir of Life: Manufacturing Cells as Medicine”, will teach Fellows the science behind immune cell therapy.

“It’s a privilege to engage Fellows who are experienced in their respective fields and share with them recent developments in cell therapy and the impact it can make on healthcare,” said Dr Andy Tay Kah Ping from the NUS College of Design and Engineering, who will be conducting the seminar.

“The use of immune cells is one of the most effective treatments for cancer and I am excited to share with the Fellows about my research and inspire them to use their respective expertise and networks to grow this sector,” added Dr Tay, who is also the Assistant Professor and Presidential Young Professor at the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering.

There are also Elective seminars, which consist of Master’s-level seminars in history, culture, religion, philosophy, and contemporary affairs. Executive seminars on such subjects are not common, said Prof Cha. “But we want to give our Fellows a wider range of topics in areas they might not have been able to study before.”

The latest DSFP preview session held on 25 March 2025 saw lively engagement with prospective participants.

Building people to build a better world

While the DSFP is new to Asia, top universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been running similar courses. Harvard University launched the Advanced Leadership Initiative in 2008, while Stanford University unveiled its Distinguished Careers Institute in 2015.

Prof Cha has a grand vision for DSFP. “In five to 10 years, when the world thinks about a best-in-class programme for ‘thrivers’ in their Third Transition, NUS and the DSFP should be top of mind, along with Harvard and Stanford.”

Universities have established degree programmes to help with the first transition (workforce entry) and second transition (career advancement). The Third Transition refers to the life stage after a successful career.

What sets DSFP apart is how it measures value – by the impact its Fellows create. “While other education programmes use conventional measures of value, such as how much salary is earned after programme completion, or how much funding is raised through a project, we want to go one step further,” Prof Cha said. “We want to measure how many people are impacted by our Fellows after they complete the programme.”

DSFP includes a week-long experiential learning trip to a Southeast Asian country. The first cohort will travel to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, where Fellows will visit Smiling Gecko, a non-profit which runs a sustainable resort that funds a farm and a 500-student school for underprivileged children.

“The trip will forge a strong community and encourage deep reflection as the Fellows eat, converse, and explore purpose projects together,” Prof Cha said. “This trip will bring the concepts of Problem, People, and Place to a concrete form, so they can visualise, and by extension, be inspired on the impact they want to make with their purpose project.”

For Ms Vicky Lim-Tan, an Independent Director of Maya Bank Philippines and Fellow from the programme’s inaugural cohort, the trip will be a special one. “I find it extra meaningful that the Programme’s impact experience trip will take place in Cambodia, a country I had helped support with the Asian Development Bank’s Commune Council Development Project some 20 years ago,” she said. “Life indeed comes full circle.”

The programme’s emphasis on meaningful impact is rooted in its five pillars, which emerged from interviews and surveys with NUS alumni who fit its target audience.

“We asked what they were looking for post-retirement, and most said things like taking care of grandchildren or playing golf,” Prof Cha said. “Most people don’t realise that continual education and meaningful purpose project activities are options. We want to give ‘thrivers’ these options.”

She added: “We do not want to be just another executive programme. Our greater vision is to build deep humans to benefit society.”

Applications for the DSFP are now open. For more information, please visit https://scale.nus.edu.sg/home/dsfp.


News from: https://news.nus.edu.sg/thriving-in-the-100-year-life-new-nus-programme-inspires-senior-leaders-to-pursue-significance-in-their-next-chapter/