These events mark the final activities of the Eramus+ CBHE 609879 "Renewed university governance in Southeast Asia" (PURSEA) project, part of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building projects funded by the European Commission for the period 2020 to 2023.
The PURSEA project, which began in February 2020, aims to strengthen university governance skills for 8 universities in Asia-Pacific, thanks to the expertise of European partners from France, Belgium and Germany. More specifically, the Asian partners have been trained in the methodology of drawing up and implementing a university's strategic development plan and action plans. To achieve these objectives, mutual know-how-building, support and expertise between the project's partner institutions have been carried out in various online and offline workshops and training courses in Vietnam, Cambodia, France and Belgium.
During the workshops on June 06 and 07, representatives of the project's member institutions reviewed all the activities and discuss new perspectives for the project. Over a period of three years, the project team has carried out important activities enabling the beneficiary universities to define their priorities, to draw up their development strategies and multi-year action plans. Thanks to the workshops and support provided by the European partners, the Vietnamese and Cambodian universities have been able to experiment with a number of strategic axes relating to training, research, e-learning and university communication... and to learn from their valuable experience. In addition to the methodological workshops, various training courses were organized to meet the needs of the Asian partners: decision-making information systems, human resources management, risk management, scientific results valorization, evaluation guidelines for higher education establishments and training programs. Moreover, Vietnamese and Cambodian universities have begun to follow the path to autonomy, as confirmed by several partners at the 3 result dissemination conferences organized in Phnom-Penh, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from December 2022 to March 2023.
At the closing ceremony on June 08, the Steering Committee presented to the public the "Guide d'accompagnement à la définition et la mise en place d'un plan stratégique de développement d'un établissement d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche" (PURSEA Guide). It is the result of a collective, multi-disciplinary and international French-speaking project involving experts from partner institutions. This guide aims to strengthen the governance capacity of higher education and research establishments, through the definition and implementation of contextualized strategic planning to support their development plan, and then to provide support for its implementation, on taking into account the political will to empower higher education and research establishments in the countries of the South-East Asia region. The Agence universitaire de la Francophone en Asie-Pacifique (AUF) and Confrasie (Conférence régionale des recteurs des établissements membres de l'AUF en Asie-Pacifique) will play an important role in disseminating the PURSEA Guide, along with training courses for interested universities in the region.
Numerous distinguished guests attended the closing ceremony: representatives of the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and the European Delegation in Cambodia, the Regional Director of AUF-Asia Pacific - Mr. Laurent Sermet, the Director General of ITC and representatives of Cambodia's higher education and research establishments.
