SU hosts ACUCA management conference
Silliman University (SU) hosted the 2019 Management Conference of the Association of Christian Universities and Colleges in Asia (ACUCA) with representatives of member universities from Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines attending, last Nov. 6-8, 2019.
“Leaders of higher education at all levels must ourselves act as change-makers…Part of the problems to change is us…The world is changing, our students are changing, the [ways] they learn are changing,” said Dr. Wai Ching Angela Wong, vice president for programs of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, who delivered the keynote address during the conference’s opening program.
Wong said that higher education and educational leadership must be “reinvented” and “revolutionized” to meet the challenges of higher education.
“Look at what our students need today. The college education that would be enough to send us to a good career path is no longer there in many countries. The students who graduated have to struggle very hard to find a way to relate to the society, to relate to the profession. A lot of existing careers would not exist [in the future],” she said.
Reinventing the current model of education into an “empowering model” said Wong, would mean encouraging inter-disciplinarity and interactivity; integrating industry-focused and immersive learning; and transitioning to project-based learning.
Wong said educators should consider developing industry-specific skills and leadership qualities among students that can be applied in addressing issues of sustainable development and for them to be able to thrive in an “unpredictable, fast-transforming world” as members of society.
Connecting curricular and co-curricular activities and encouraging students to take on individual projects, said Wong, are examples of how educators can engage students in solving unscripted, real world problems.
The conference also included a panel discussion on “Transformational Leadership, Environmental Sustainability and Creating Cultures of Peace,” with panelists Dr. Betty Cernol-McCann, SU president and ACUCA president; Dr. Carmen Valdes, Assumption College president; and Dr. Henry Feriadi, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana rector.
“We need to reexamine our values and institutional practices, our teaching methods and curricula…The one and done model of higher education should give way to an integrative approach that is responsive to the needs of the times,” said McCann.
“Embracing our ecological awareness requires more than accumulating information or advance some policies, however important these may be. A change of heart…is what is required of us, because if we simply have those theories and principles right up there at the cognitive level and not translated into the level of the heart or the emotion, then there may not likely be passion and enthusiasm among those charged with the responsibility to do something about God’s creation,” she said.
Meanwhile, Valdes talked about “feminine leadership” as a transformative kind of leadership characterized by empathy, which allows educational leaders to put students first.
“[Empathy] is the language of Generation Z, and if you don’t talk their language, you lose them. You can’t educate them without empathy…[The feminine spirit is about] understanding at depth, with multi-perspectives,” she said.
Feriadi, whose talk focused on creating cultures of peace in universities in a time of technological changes, highlighted the importance of education in the formation of values and virtues.
“We are given the golden opportunity to educate and transform young people…and the way we prepare our young generation is through education…[One of] the ways to educate young people, in our campus, is through service-learning,” he said.
Dr. Jenny Lind Elmaco, Strategic Partnerships Office director and ACUCA general secretary, was one of the panel moderators. Dr. Earl Jude Paul L. Cleope, vice president for academic affairs, and Dr. Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez, College of Performing and Visual Arts dean, also attended the conference as panelists.
The conference was designed to create a deeper awareness of the participants’ leadership impact; support them in refining their personal leadership styles; and strengthen their emotional intelligence and ability to connect and acquire the skills that will enable them to bring out the best in others.
Since 1976, ACUCA has brought together Christian educational leaders for the development of Christian education in Asia and beyond. The ACUCA currently has 64 member institutions in nine countries.
