Shonagh Maak returns with her fourth and final blog from this year’s Going Global conference. Shonagh is the Internationalisation Manager at the University of Stirling.
So my well intentioned efforts of daily blogging on this trip have well and truly failed but in my defence, it has been a pretty hectic few days…
Going Global finished on Friday and one of my personal highlights was the closing plenary where a number of young leaders from around the world spoke about their experiences in gaining an international education and what they saw as the challenges and opportunities for future students to come. We were also treated to yet more traditional Malaysian music and dance to end a thought provoking and exciting week. Next year’s conference will take place in Berlin which given the timing should be really interesting.
A slightly smaller group of colleagues from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and UWS then headed onto Jakarta on the Sunday. We were fortunate enough to meeting with the Ministry of Higher Education for Indonesia during the conference so we headed straight to the British Council offices on the Monday morning where colleagues from the British Embassy and British Council gave us an overview of the education sector in Indonesia. Despite its proximity to Malaysia, the landscape is very different and offers a totally new set of opportunities (and challenges!) for UK institutions. After the briefing, we headed to Universitas Indonesia, one of the top universities in the country, where we were warmly welcomed by a number of staff to explore shared internationalisation priorities and possible collaboration opportunities.
The group then headed to a panel discussion hosted by British Chambers of Commerce about The Future of Data and AI where we were joined by Dave Fitch from The Data Lab. Given the popularity of this area for prospective students, it is always useful to hear more about how Big Data and Data Analytics skills can really open doors for students graduating in these areas. The evening ended with an alumni reception where I was honoured to meet with some lovely Stirling alumni and hear what they are doing now. I was particularly excited to hear of an upcoming Stirling wedding – one for the alumni magazine for sure!
Most of the group are now headed home or onto the next country. I have one more day here in Jakarta before heading onto India before back to Scotland later in the month. A huge thanks to colleagues from British Chambers of Commerce, British Council, SDI and Universities Scotland for all their help in coordinating this trip and to the colleagues and friends from across the various universities that I’ve travelled with this week.