Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of Monash University, Australia, Prof. Abid Khan, gave a public lecture which was attended by the academic community of UGM on Thursday (22/9) in the UGM Senate Hall. This event was held as part of the ongoing cooperation between UGM and Monash University.
“Monash University has developed rapidly in the process of internationalization and global engagement. Therefore, we want to learn how Monash can achieve this. I hope this public lecture can be beneficial to us all,” said the Vice Rector of Cooperation and Alumni, Dr. Paripurna Sugarda, SH, M. Hum.
In a public lecture entitled ‘Inspiring Innovation: The Monash Experience’, Professor Abid Khan shared the experiences of Monash University in facing the challenges of the globalization and internationalization of higher education. Despite being Australia’s largest university with about 70,000 students from 140 countries in the world, he acknowledged that internationalization has presented it with new challenges.
“Transition in internationalization is very important given the changes that we faced at the global level. We also learned a lot from the experience of universities in other countries, including Indonesia,” he said.
This change is shown by the increasing complexity of global problems that demand innovative solutions to emerge, as well as the ever-expanding role that should be played by higher education institutions.
“Related to this, our strategy rests on five pillars, namely improving the quality of human resources, training, research, forming an interdisciplinary team, building a world-class infrastructure, as well as turning research into real impacts,” he explained.
He emphasized the importance of greater attention to collaboration and new innovation models that will bring about greater impacts. One of the important factors in establishing cooperative relations is by forming a small number of strategic cooperations that go along with the direction of university. In such cooperation, it is also necessary to have a purpose, philosophy, and competencies that are complementary.
Based on this purpose, Monash is encouraged to continue developing its global connections, for example by setting up educational institutions in various countries, such as Malaysia, South Africa, Italy, India, China, and Britain. The university has also been actively cooperating with UGM, one example of which is through the Eliminate Dengue Project, which is run through a collaboration between the Institute of Vector-Borne Disease at Monash University and the Faculty of Medicine UGM.
“I hope in the future we can continue to expand cooperation in other fields,” he said.