Hello all. I had a wonderful opportunity to go back to my world of international relations......meeting with its IR team ทีมวเิทศสัมพันธ์ from both the central office and from faculty representatives.
Why wonderful?
One university becomes more proactive to sharpen the potential of its IR crew.
I hoped my retirement would have seen me being more helpful to this IR circle but to my surprise, things didn't seem to be as proactive as I wish to see and hear...instead, it has been filled with routine, paperwork, and numbers including trips, foreign students and MOUs, turning some university offices to be like travel agencies to handle programs and visa.
It's like 'back to the past' when I started my 'witait' career track ka.
What's wonderful?
Many lessons learned from my involvement with the IR team for about two days in a province.
My workshop buddy and I designed quite a few activities for 47 participants (+1.....their VP for IR) on the basis of doing groundwork for them to self assess (their own selves, faculties, and university), offer a big picture about the world trends, internationalization of higher education (IZN) and internationalization at home (IaH), university directions, and how these topics/issues need to be linked and aligned with their needs for improvement within their scope of responsibilities as IR members.
The workshop went fine, allowing them to connect and communicate, think and reflect what they've done and what the IR offices are for, and learn about and link the world and their university to make their IR missions work in the better directions. Gen gaps were felt though to us not that strong. We sure admire their boldness and creativity which add to the strengths of the IR for their boldness and creativity. Would be awesome if they're guided and supported appropriately with simpler systems and flexibility.
What's better is hopefully they feel proud of being support staff of their university and faculties and that their meaningful efforts from teaming up to learn and move to the same/right directions will enhance the quality of the development of all. Senior leadership support is essential.
How will it be more wonderful?
There's a lot more work, more understanding to reach from both top down and bottom up. Yet, it was cool to see that there was an initiative that would be extended to key leaders who are involved in IR at the university and faculty levels plus more regular meet-ups. Some said they felt an urge to learn more about what they haven't known before while some others thought they would need to be more disciplined.
We left the workshop feeling fantastic ka.
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น