Annual Review 2008/09

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Annual Review 2008/09

www.universitas21.com

Contents

Universitas 21Annual Review 2008/09

Page 3 From the Chair Page 4 Secretariat Update The Network Page 6 2009 Symposium – Influencing Public Policy Page 7 U21 Year of Sustainability Collaborative Research Page 8 Water Futures for Sustainable Cities Page 10 Confucius Institute workshop Teaching & Knowledge Transfer Page 11 eBook series Page 12 Jointly-Awarded PhDs Page 15 Student Exchange Page 16 Student Mobility Network Page 18 Diaspora workshop Cross-Network Collaboration Page 19 Health Sciences Page 20 Summer School Page 23 Forum for International Networking in Education Page 24 Deans of Education Page 25 Human Resources Page 26 Undergraduate Research Conference Page 29 Deans and Directors of Graduates Studies Page 30 Global Issues Programme Page 32 International Directors Page 34 Learning Environments Design Forum Page 36 Staff Fellowships Page 38 Heads of Administration

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T h U years. Previously we have witnessed the processes of change and renewal that affect all universities, but with the enriched understanding that this network fosters, our work together has been enhanced. Our world is quite different from what it was eleven years ago whenUniversitas 21was founded. In the year just ended, all of us in higher education have found ourselves buffeted by external forces as diverse as the globalfinancial problems and the H1N1 virus. forces have challenged and also These invigorated our universities. The experiences of this year will inevitably make our universities stronger and more competent to serve our societies. In essential respects, they underscore the value of global collaboration among universities. All of us have felt these new challenges and opportunities both individually and institutionally. One might expect that hard times would diminish the value of international collaboration and of education that prepares students to work and to live in a global economy. In truth, the following pages demonstrate that the opposite has been in evidence this year – that university leaders’ common personal commitments to building durable international alliances have kept our universities andUniversitas 21on course, external and internal stresses notwithstanding. In a year of hard times, our universities have generated ever more creative ways to sustain international offerings for students and international opportunities for faculty members to work together to address our shared research priorities. The declared strategic goals of the world’s leading universities, including many that do not belong toUniversitas 21, reflect the importance to our sector of international Professor John Casteen, Chair of theUniversitas 21network dimensions and perspectives – a phenomenon driven not only by league tables or rankings, however valuable orflawed they may be as indicators of quality, but also by awareness of the necessity in our time to play, as it were, on the international stage. The language of internationalisation resonates across every campus. Students, staff members, employers and business partners now embrace this wider, international dimension in the work that they do separately and together. They expect us to provide venues in which they can learn from one another. They want to present the products of their scholarship to increasingly diverse and global audiences. Internationalisation is asine qua non   for universities confidently embracing the challenges of the future while retaining the very best of the past. Internationalisation is nothing new: the language has changed since the days of the ‘wandering scholars’ of Medieval Europe, or for that matter since the beginning of this decade, but the concept of learning unconstrained by national barriers has a long and distinguished history. Thomas Jefferson, who founded my own university in the early 19th century, was acutely conscious of America’s isolation from what was then the European mainstream. He mistrusted isolation and argued for a global vision of teaching and learning. All of us own that vision today.Universitas 21takes us and our universities beyond our own hemispheres and builds (paraphrasing one of Jefferson’s dicta for his university) a bulwark of the human mind that is global in scale. I invite you to review in these pages the ways in whichUniversitas 21is contributing to the internationalisation of teaching and learning, and perhaps also to share with me the sense of purpose and optimism that our faculty members and students have gained by the work they now do together. All of our universities are committed above all else to developing the freedom of the human mind to think, reason, learn and create. These pages document one significant year’s progress toward that end. Professor John T Casteen III Chair ofUniversitas 21 President, University of Virginia

3

From the Chair

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W t h work collaboratively together are self-evident for a network of global universities, but one of those principles, that we will strive for sustainability of activity, could apply to many situations, not just in higher education. It could be argued that the word ‘sustainability’ is currently overused – I write this as the UN’s Copenhagen Summit is fast approaching – and that there is nothing new to say about it nor new action to be taken. It is with this rather cynical take that I reflect on 2008/09 which was theUniversitas 21Year of Sustainability. It was at our Dublin meeting in 2008 that U21 Presidents agreed we should aim to extend collaborative efforts in support of sustainability during the forthcoming year, building on that line in our Strategic Plan and taking cognisance of the work which individual universities were already undertaking on their own campuses. At our 2009 Presidential meeting, hosted by Korea University in Seoul, the Presidents signed a statement which unified our efforts during this year, highlighting the important roles in relation to research, teaching, community engagement and the university itself as employer and landlord. Over the past twelve months, colleagues at all levels have been considering how best to engage with such a broad topic. This Annual Review records much of that, ranging from the 2009 Summer School hosted by the University of Queensland on the theme of ‘Climate Change Adaptation’ to the ongoing research collaborations of theWater Futures for Sustainable Citiesgroup. Our commitment to protecting the world unites the attention of students, faculty and staff. Although there are debates and disagreements regarding much of the detail, the desire to protect the earth on which we all live and depend and to bequeath it in good state to future generations is a common one.

Clare Noakes, Administrator

Jane Usherwood, Secretary General

Lavinia Johns, Quality Assurance Executive

Secretariat Update

Tarlok Singh, Financial Administrator 4