At 68, Dr. Rahimatsah Amat remains deeply involved in protecting the forests and wildlife of Borneo. His journey from town planning at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to conservation shows how an education can continue to shape a life in ways that are difficult to predict at the outset.

At an age when many of his contemporaries might be considering a slower pace of life, Dr. Rahimatsah remains occupied with the future of Borneo’s forests and wildlife, especially large mammals such as elephants, orang utans and bantengs, locally known as tembadau.

Through the Sabah Environmental Trust, the self-funded non-governmental organisation he founded 14 years ago, Dr. Rahimatsah works to protect fragile ecosystems and endangered species. Its work extends across Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan, with connections reaching Bangkok and China. Among its initiatives are collaborations with international engineers using advanced camera traps to monitor endangered wildlife and help deter illegal poaching.

It is not necessarily the career one might expect of someone whose academic roots lie in town planning.

Dr. Rahimatsah pursued his PhD at UTM’s Faculty of Built Environment, in the Town Planning Department. Although conservation might appear some distance from his original discipline, he found that much of what he learnt could be applied in a different setting. Technological skills, structured approaches to problem-solving and spatial planning strategies became useful tools in understanding and protecting natural habitats.

His career is a useful example of why an education should not be seen simply as preparation for a particular job. Knowledge acquired in one discipline can find relevance elsewhere, sometimes many years later and in circumstances a student could scarcely have anticipated.

Ask Dr. Rahimatsah what mattered most about his years at UTM and he speaks less about the curriculum than about those who guided him. His supervisors — Prof. Amran Hamzah, whom he knew as Dr. Bob; the late Geographic Information System (GIS) expert Dr. Aris Yaakub; and remote-sensing experts Prof. Ibrahim Seni and Prof. Mazlan Hashim — came from fields far removed from wildlife biology.

What stayed with him was their willingness to guide his work, the encouragement they offered and the environment they created for him to pursue his research with confidence. Their influence, as he remembers it, was not simply academic. It also helped shape the confidence with which he approached his work and the opportunities that followed.

His experience offers a useful reminder of what makes a university memorable. Qualifications matter, but so do the relationships formed along the way and the feeling that, during those formative years, someone was invested in your success.

More than two decades later, that connection remains. When an email arrived inviting Dr Rahimatsah to reconnect with UTM through an alumni programme, he was genuinely excited. It is a small detail, but a revealing one. Alumni relationships are often discussed as something universities cultivate after graduation; in reality, much of that relationship has already been shaped by the student’s experience on campus.

For Dr. Rahimatsah, UTM gave him knowledge that proved useful in ways he could not necessarily have anticipated when he was studying town planning. The methods and skills travelled with him into conservation, while the relationships gave him a connection to the university that endured long after the degree was completed.

Beyond the Familiar

For young Sabahans considering whether to pursue their education away from home, Dr. Rahimatsah encourages them to take the opportunity. His own experience of studying in Johor was shaped not only by what he learnt, but also by the welcome he received from the UTM community and the people around him.

It is advice informed by his own journey. His career has taken him well beyond the conventional boundaries of town planning, with skills acquired in one discipline applied to another — from spatial planning to habitat protection and the monitoring of endangered wildlife.

There is also something significant in the fact that, at 68, Dr. Rahimatsah remains actively engaged in this work. Fourteen years after establishing the Sabah Environmental Trust, his attention remains on conservation and on the ecosystems that future generations will inherit.

His story does not suggest that every student needs to know precisely where a degree will eventually lead. Quite the opposite. A degree may begin in one field, but what we choose to do with that knowledge can take us somewhere entirely unexpected.