Brief Review

Summer Institute 2016

The Summer Institute: Higher Education for Tomorrow was successfully held between May 30 and Jun 10, 2016 and attended by a total of 26 participants, mostly from developing countries in the region. This is the fourth year of the Faculty's Summer Institute cum Symposium which aims to provide a unique learning experience for aspiring/practicing leaders in institutions and ministries, offering them opportunities to interact with experts about global, systemic and institutional perspectives for the future of higher education. Most of this year's participants were practicing leaders in leading institutions in their respective systems. Twenty-six participants came from seven countries including Mongolia (14), Cambodia (6), Laos (2), Macau (1), Argentina (1), Nigeria (1) and Ethiopia (1). Among them were quite a few University Vice-Rectors (Vice-Presidents) and Officers from the Education Ministries. The participants were mostly supported by national government institutions or sponsorship provided by HKU.

The Summer Institute was organized with eight Faculty Facilitators, three International Facilitators, two Guest Facilitators and a Guest Coordinator who provided specialized expertise in designated parts of the programme. A comprehensive array of innovative ventures had provided perspectives and insights in Global Trends, System Governance, Institutional Management, Research Excellence, Knowledge Exchange, Fundraising and Networking, Student Learning Experiences and Sustainability, to name a few. Apart from interactions and discussions with prominent guest speakers, facilitators and students from HKU, visits to varies Faculties and City University of Hong Kong were also arranged.

A two-day Asian Higher Education Symposium was hosted during Summer Institute. "Towards Excellence in Higher Education" is the theme this year. The objective of the symposium was to delineate a picture of the reality in higher education, and to construct a positive framework (or frameworks) with constructive impacts. The symposium also targeted to dissipate some of the misconceptions and negative sentiments, and bring about new perspectives and hope, and perhaps some reforms back home.

Drawing on the experiences and knowledge gained from the two-week programme, participants presented their group Knowledge Products, i.e. real-life projects which could be brought home and put into practice in their respective countries or institutions . Based on the feedback collected from the participants, Summer Institute was described as an "eye opening" and "inspirational" experience and achieved an excellent score of 9.5 over 10 as evaluated by the SI participants.