SINGAPORE - Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has been appointed governing board chairman of the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Mr Goh, who was Singapore's second prime minister from 1990 to 2004, will assume the position on April 1, 2017.

The 75-year-old takes over from founding chairman Professor Wang Gungwu, 86, who had helmed the school's governing board for 12 years.

"I am honoured to be the new chairman of the governing board of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS. The LKY School, under the stewardship of Professor Wang Gungwu as the founding chairman, is widely regarded as the leading public policy school in Asia," said Mr Goh, an NUS alumnus, in a press release issued by the school on Wednesday (Nov 2).

"I look forward to working with the governing board, Dean Kishore Mahbubani and his team, to continue the upward trajectory of this distinguished school."

Prof Wang, a prominent historian of Asia, called his time with the school an "immense privilege" and expressed his pleasure at helping to building a public policy school of top calibre in Singapore.

Under Prof Wang's stewardship, the school made consistent progress and substantially expanded its educational programmes, both in scope and scale.

He is also credited with playing an instrumental role when the school decided in 2012 to establish a Chinese Studies programme to consolidate and strengthen its strategic engagements with China.

Since its founding in 2004, the school has taken in 2,350 students from over 80 countries.