JOHOR BAHRU, 15 JULY : UTM plays host to 10 representatives from 5 higher education institutions for the next three days for the third Global Initiaitves Partnership (GIP) meeting at its Johor Bahru campus.
The Global Initiatives Partnership (GIP) is a consortium of renowned universities from across the globe. Member institutions include the University of Kent, United Kingdom, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, University of Ghent, Belgium, Tongji University, China and Virginia Tech, USA.Members were represented by their respective Vice Presidents for Internationalization or Head of International Office. The UTM delegation was led by Professor Dr. Rose Alinda Alias, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic And Internationalization.
GIP’s inaugural meeting was hosted by the University of Kent (Canterbury) on September, 2010. The subsequent meeting in 2011 was held in Blacksburg, Virginia in USA.
The consortium was set up to increase international institutional collaboration by forming intimate networks that facilitate cross-border cooperation,with a target to enable short and long term student mobility and research-focus activities such aspublication and conferences.
Prof. Zaini Ujang, in his opening address during the meeting, explained that UTM is looking beyond the conventional framework of partnership between partner institutions. The optimal form of partnership which the university is looking forward to is niche partnerships which enable key operational and strategic issues of common interest to be identified to support capacity building of members within the partnership framework.
Citing examples of existing UTM partnership framework with renowned universities in the UK, Germany and the USA, Prof. Zaini hoped that members of the GIP network would develop partnership frameworks stimulating academic mobility of undergraduates and postgraduates between member universities during the meeting.
Throughout the 2-day meeting, the members discussed on issues on internationalisation of higher education and key strategic activities of the framework such as the “Global Studies Programme”, research summer schools and networking activities within member institutions. Key agreements were achieved on the Global Studies Programme, which is expected to be launched next year. Members will also participated in a tour around UTM and Educity @ Iskandar and attended reception dinners hosted by the UTM top management.