Capabity building for CLMV

I'd like to share with you another regional effort to support capacity building of CLMV from a 2-day meeting I just attended ka.

SEAMEO-RIHED, with funding from Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF), has taken lead in a planned 2-phased project to harmonize higher education in Southeast Asia so as to formulate the Asian Higher Education Area in the future.

Through the 22 member universities under this GMS-UC consortium, the first expert meeting discussed what would be best to facilitate the development and speed the progress of CLMVT (and Thailand in fact can also help serve as resource persons and offer good practices in some areas). The areas in focus include leadership development at both policy and implementation levels, teaching and research capacity, internationalization process combined with quality assurance and credit transfer.

It was tough to discuss the whole skeletons we wished to see and fortunately, it turned out to be so interactive and fun.

The meeting stressed the following key aspects:

1. Leadership development for top management has to be 'futuristic, inspirational, strategic, big-picture and action-oriented.'

2. Alignment at all levels from policy to implementation must be created.  For example, each country has to be represented by one from the national authorities and the other from university. This will ensure that the efforts at the university level will align with the national policies and green lights will be given by the authorities.

In addition, alignment within one university will have to be seen through some form of communication map/diagram.

3. Member universities will formulate a plan that is like an IDP -- Individual Development Plan to respond well to their respective contexts while jointly determining common priority issues for possible cooperation and training.

4. Mid-term review and site-visits are incorporated to monitor the work progress and identify needed assistance.

5. With internationalized institutions as its goal, it should facilitate harmonization of higher education in a more speedy and effective way.

6. IRO --International Relations Office and its officers must be given heightened importance......to maximize university efforts on the internationalization front, turning away from being regarded as supporters of logistic matters like visit arrangements or organizers of international conferences. Rather, they should be trained to see the big picture of the organization, learn more about the principles of IZN, QA systems, partnership sustainability, and knowledge management.

7. CLMVT all have been cooperating with a number of countries and funding agencies. It's their responsibility to see that this project will complement and build on the existing efforts or can fill in some existing gaps.

It's interesting to follow how things will move on and I hope that by the end of the second year, there'll be some good results. If alignment of the plan/actions and mutual understanding of key people involved can be seen, it'll be a fine success ka.

Cheers.

One special talk with a few lessons

Dear all, Hope you have already had a great start of the work week ka.

Let me share what's on my mind being a guest speaker at Khon Kaen University Graduate School late last week ka.

Why did I accept the invite?

A Fulbright alum who is an ajarn there called to invite me. The key sentence that led me to answer 'yes' as soon as I knew for sure I'd be free was, 'Pi Tip ka, this is the third year we invite you to be our speaker ka!' Um! what else could I respond but 'yes' chai mai ka?

What did I talk about?

The platform was for graduate students to share their research projects and so more or less, the focus was on research. Yet, I was thinking of what else they needed to be more aware of besides their own studies. I then thought of what researchers haven't paid much attention, which is my own line of interest....so I picked up the keyword, 'Global Citizens'.

I came up with a diagram to include 'knowledge within and across disciplines, life skills, and morality with the center of the overlapping circles to say, 'graceful global citizens'.

How did it go?

With quite a few examples, including cross-culture (how could I not do it, jing mai ka?) that connected with their thinking and analytical abilities, it turned out fine ka. A number of them listened so attentively that I felt real good ka.

What about feedback of my talk?

From my experience for Thai seminars, if any session went ok, one good indicator was picture opportunities (very Thai ka!) Several groups and individuals took pix with me so I think the talk bore some impacts ka. One young lady came to tell me she was inspired and would fear less to step to a higher level of her studies ka. So happy!