Professor Kau Ah Keng was Vice Dean of NUS Business School from 1982 to 1985 and 1987 to 1988, as well as serving three stints as Head of the Department of Marketing. He was also Deputy Director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, Director of the School of Postgraduate Management Studies (SPMS), and was a leading figure in building the Business School’s MBA programme. In 2008 Professor Kau co-founded the iLEAD programme which was subsequently subsumed under the NOC (NUS Overseas Colleges) Singapore.
Colleagues remember Professor Kau as a soft spoken, humble, kind, and hardworking man who was always apologetic about inconveniencing others. As the Director of SPMS, he contributed immensely to building the School’s MBA programme of today. As the Head of the Marketing Department, he was one of the pioneers who built a strong foundation for the success the department has had since. He was also a great mentor to young senior tutors after returning from their respective PhD programmes.
Most notably, Professor Kau was a pioneer in the research on values and lifestyles in Singapore since the late 1980s. He was the lead researcher for the first Singapore Quality of Life (QOL) survey in 1996 and to continue his legacy, the once-every-five year nation-wide survey has just seen its 5th edition being published in 2018. These surveys provided insights into what matters for Singaporeans in terms of their happiness and wellbeing, and have generated interests from academics, policy makers, and practitioners.
