News & Events 2008

UC: Bulletin November 2008

Congratulations Graduates!

The University of Cambodia would like to extend a special congratulations to the class of 2008.  The 140 graduates who received diplomas in the university’s 4^th Commencement Ceremony on October 16, 2008.

Also honored in this year’s ceremonies were three recipients of Honorary Doctorate degrees:

• Lok Chumteav Bun Rany Hun Sen of The Kingdom of Cambodia received an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities

• H.E. Jose Venecia, Jr. of the Philippines received an Honorary Doctorate in International Relations

• Dr. Horst Posdorf of Germany received an Honorary Doctorate in Public Administration

New Course to Dispel Myths About the Garment Industry

The Garment Industry Productivity Center (GIPC) thinks so and, along with USAID, is funding a new course at The University of Cambodia that will put the garment industry in the scope of the global economy. As part of UC’s International Business degree program that is being revived this year, “IBS 309: Textiles and Garments in the Global Economy” will teach students the ins and outs of the garment industry and what it has to offer educated managers.

UC received books, reading materials, PowerPoint presentations and brochures from GIPC, all to be used to aid the professors’ lectures in the classroom. Gina Lopez, Associate Dean in the College of Management who is spear-heading this new course, also said the students will investigate case studies and take a site visit to the Adrian Ross’ New Island Clothing factory, which she says isone of the finest run garment factories in the country.

In the course launch, which took place October 8, representatives from GIPC, USAID and the garment industry came to UC to rally students enrolled in the course around the benefits that this course will bring them and their future careers.

“First of all, the garment industry will never go away,” said GIPC Chief of Party Jane O’Dell to the students. “Second, in the garment industry, you will learn how to manage production and manufacturing. Then you can take that expertise to other industries.”

As Van Sou Ieng, Chairman of the Garments Manufacturers’ Association in Cambodia (GMAC), pointed out, there are nearly 300 garment factories in Cambodia that hire 25 to 30 managers each. Still, the country’s industry isn’t as productive as in neighboring countries, so there is a desperate need for educated Cambodians to take over management positions and improve the industry.

“We need Cambodian managers so we can send expats back to their countries and lower costs,” he said. He also added that recent graduates need not hang on to those preconceived notions that a career in garments means you’ll be working in a dirty sweatshop for meager pay. He pays his accountant $500 per month and his managers $750 per month.

The University of Cambodia is one of the first recipients of this new program initiated by GIPC that aims to build local capacity in the garment industry in order to allow Cambodia to compete in the global arena.

“The University of Cambodia was one of the highest rated,” O’Dell said about the universities that GIPC surveyed to take part in the program. “It has good programs and programs that are focused on the employability of students, as well as how students can contribute to society and, of course, be rewarded with good pay."

Currently, nearly 100 students are enrolled in the course, which meets during all three sessions on Tuesday and Thursday and during the weekend sessions. Depending on the student response to the inauguration of this course, it might continue to be offered next term.

 4^th Asia Economic Forum Addresses Global Financial Crisis and Regional Issues

With global financial markets currently treading through rocky waters and the Asian stocks taking a swift plunge in October, this year’s Asia Economic Forum could not have been more strategically placed.

“Indeed, this financial crisis has negatively affected millions of people, particularly those in Asia, and mounted to obstacles against development and poverty reduction that we can hardly achieve so far,” Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen said in his keynote, which opened the conference.

How appropriate, then, that the convening of the 4th Asia Economic Forum, The University of Cambodia’s independently run think-tank, brought in experts from around the region and the world October 14 and 15 to examine, analyze, discuss and exchange views on such issues as stable development, global competition, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. This year’s forum focused on the topic “Asia in a Globalizing World: Challenges, Priorities, Leadership and Future Directions,” and a focus on the financial crisis was the thread that linked the conference’s four sessions together.

As the opening speaker of the first plenary session, “Issues and Challenges Confronting Asia,” Lord George Carey of the UK offered an outsider’s perspective on how the fragile state of the economy has affected Asian countries. Although East Asia holds some of the weakest economies, he said, the buoyancy of East Asain trade has guarded the region against the global economic downturn.

“It is undeniably the case that Asia has been blessed with able and inventive people and enriched by ancient cultures,” Lord Carey said.

However, this safeguard is a structure the AEF panelists considered could impede economic development. Much discussion during the session led to concerns about how East Asia countries face the challenge of not only competing regionally with countries like China and India, but competing on the global scale as well. According to the panelists, challenges such as rising expectations in regards to poverty, the environment and disease control, as well as the challenge of educating people to improve human resources and technology have to be balanced alongside current economic concerns like rising food and oil prices.

Moving into session two, “Current Priorities for Asia,” the panelists gave their personal viewpoints on what Asia needs to focus on in order to be able to compete globally. Concern for education, community building and sustainability – both environmental and economical – ranked high as “should-be” focal points for Asia’s leaders.

“Some problems of education have yet to be addressed, such as lack of school facilities, very low teacher-to-student ratio and the inadequacy of curriculums,” said Imron Cotan, Secretary General of Indonesia’s Department of Foreign Affairs. “The solution to this problem is conscientious national planning with an eye to the goal of universal education.”

During day two of the conference, the session opened up discussion on the topics “The Role of Asian Leadership in the World” and “Asia’s Future Directions.” In the former, the panelists highlighted qualities they would like to see in their leaders as Asia continues on the path toward globalization, including a service attitude, aggression toward achievement and logical thinking, as well as what issues the leaders need to think critically about. The conference ended with thoughts on future directions for the continent.

“East Asia’s combination of intelligent interventionist states and visionary entrepreneurs willing to think long-term should enable our home region to pace global growth all over again – as it did between 1960 and 1990,” said Jose de Venecia, Jr., Congressman in the Philippines’ House of Representatives and Chairman of CDI Asia Pacific.

AEF International Coordinator Bandol Lim saw the discussions at this year’s conference as vital to helping influence the current economic climate changes in Asia.

“Given the current financial events, I hope that the discussions will be used to guide policy decisions. We must learn to manage natural resources and deal with climate change in order to have a stable global economy because everyone’s economies are tied together,” he said.

Asia is especially important to analyze, he added, because of the economic growth Asia as a whole is seeing.

“In this century, China and India will surpass the U.S. economy. If the preemptive formation of the ASEAN Community is truly realized, Asia will have three of the largest economies in the world.”

The dialogue will continue next year as the AEF adds another facet to include the Australian perspective. According to UC President Kao Kim Hourn, there will be two conferences, one in Phnom Penh and another in Perth, Australia.

AFDD Aims for Change Through Exploration of Many Religious Perspectives
 

“This dialogue is needed because, despite countless intersections, the worlds do not meet comfortably and we are still groping to find bridges,” said Katherine Marshall, who is involved in the World Faiths Development Dialogue and served as former adviser to the World Bank president, in her keynote remarks. “The vocabulary, the images and stories, and the intellectual constructs of different worlds, can be very discordant and seem far removed.  But in reality they overlap and are intertwined.”

The conference addressed this issue of cooperation – or as Marshall put it, “building bridges” – as well as the ideas of peace and harmony in three plenary sessions. The first looked at Cambodian perspectives, the second took a regional and international point of view, while the third explored what inter-faiths dialogue will lead to in the future.

Representatives of Cambodian Islamic, Protestant and Buddhist faiths in the first session all highlighted education as the most important means of promoting peace, cooperation and harmony among the different religious sects. 

The panelists of the second session reiterated the need for education and called for religious leaders to disseminate ideas of peace and cooperation among their followers. At the heart of this, said Jose de Venecia, Jr., is the need for people with different ideas to begin talking to one another.

“There cannot be peace among nations unless there’s peace among religions. There cannot be peace among religions unless there’s dialogue,” he said.

In the third session, the panelists took different perspectives on how to take the efforts of the AFDD in a forward moving direction in resolving world conflicts. Chou Bun Eng, Secretary of State to the Ministry of Interior, pointed out that people can use their similarities to understand their differences, while Tepsakha Khi Sovanratana, Vice Director at Preah Sihanuraja University, pointed out that Buddhists believe that world peace cannot be achieved without peace within individuals.

Overall, the panelists had a common consensus that the diversity of faiths and cultures need to be preserved and valued, especially in the changing landscape of the 21^st century. As Marshall mentioned, the inter-faiths movement is becoming a global trend seen on the regional, national and international levels.

“The modern interfaith movement largely reflects changes linked to modernization and globalization,” she said. “First, one’s religion today, in most modern societies, is not a simple given, an inherited identity, and second, religions are far more intertwined today, with different groups living together all over the world, than they generally were in the past.  Thus, a product of modernization is the emergence of plural societies and interfaith work is one avenue to address the implications of this vast social change.”

The goal of AFDD is to bring that global movement to a more regional level in Asia.

“We hope that it will be an additional tool and provide a different perspective using faith based understanding to help develop a culture of peace,” coordinator Bandol Lim said.

According to Samrang Kamsan, moderator of session one and the initiator of this forum for dialogue, peace and development are directly linked.

“Without peace, there is no development,” he said. “We would like to ask interfaith groups to educate about peace to work toward harmony in society so we have no more conflicts.”

The AFDD will convene in a third conference, but that date has yet to be determined. For more information on the AFDD, visit www.afdd.org.kh.

Former Archbishop Speaks on Importance of Religion to Leadership

From Buddha and Abraham to Mohammed and Jesus, religious leaders have impacted the world in unchangeable and unthinkable ways, creating new modes of thought and influencing generations of followers. Lord George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and a religious leader of his own time, encouraged people of all faiths to lead in such a way that promotes peace.

Lord Carey spoke to about 200 UC students and community members, addressing the topic, “Does Religion Have Anything to Contribute Towards Leadership?” as part of the Asia Leadership Center’s Eminent Leaders Lecture Series. According to him, religion contributes to societal leadership in three ways: through transcendentalism, morality and service to others.

“From these three principles, religious leaders have led by example, have put others first and sought to build a better world,” Lord Carey said in his presentation.

Applying a transcendental mindset, he explained, gives humans a point of accountability and a sense of humility. Put simply, “Religion reminds us of our creatureliness.”

Religions also operate under moral codes, which, he said, sets an example for the way society as a whole should operate. When a leader lives by a moral standard, it keeps him or her thinking about the benefits of the group, avoiding selfish behaviors.

Finally, Lord Carey touched on the idea of a service attitude. Effective leadership, he said, does not come from a person who wishes to make money, get famous or pursue other selfish desires. It comes in service to the community.

Lord Carey laid these ideas amid the greater context of what makes an effective leader, citing influential leaders like Ghandi, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, who have used their authority as leaders to build a more harmonious world.

Lord Carey served 70 million Anglicans as the 103^rd Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002. After receiving his Master’s in Theology and PhD for his research on the origins of Christian ministry, he continued on to be a Fellow of the Library of Congress, a Trustee of the World Faiths Development Dialogue and the Co-Chair of the Council of 100, which seeks to bridge the gap between the Western and Islamic worlds, as well as serving at various universities in the United Kingdom and authoring 14 books.

 Leadership Workshop Encourages Discussion Among Community Leaders

The Asia Leadership Center (ALC) of The University of Cambodia, organized a three-day training workshop, October 24-26, allowing aspiring leaders in Cambodia to study the many aspects of leadership. The topic was considered from a global perspective, with a host of international speakers being supported by home-grown experts in the field.   In a short but tightly packed 72 hours, 20 workshop participants were given a rigorous introduction to a wide array of leadership concepts, delivered by leadership experts from Cambodia, the Philippines, the U.K. and the U.S., that could be used to build upon their own leadership capabilities and skills.

“I think that most of participants, including myself, gained a lot of experience from this workshop, and all the theories through this training have applied to individual’s goals,” said participant Simorn Sorn, who works in the administrative arm of UNICEF in Cambodia. She added that the workshop challenged the participants’ ways of thinking and benefited them in terms of professional development.

Topics covered during the workshop included the leader-follower relationship, a matter that was considered from the point of view of fairness, trust and ethical behavior. The workshop also considered the leader’s personal characteristics and traits and the leader’s ability to use status in influencing the behavior of followers. Other topics include leadership in the cross-cultural context, participative leadership, leadership and work teams, and charismatic or transformational leadership. 

While the structure of the workshop was based upon a lecture format, the intellectual fodder stimulated discussion and debate among the participants from how to relieve stress caused by work to how the rise of strong leaders can contribute to Cambodian development.

“I think this is a very useful workshop because I not only learned from the speakers, but also the participants who came from difference agencies both national and international,” said participant Lem Vanak, a representative of EFC-KEY, an organization that works with Cambodian youth.

With participants coming from a variety of backgrounds, presenter Gina Lopez felt it was a good opportunity for them to learn from each other and learn from their own work, getting the best from of a variety views.

“The exchanging of ideas through discussion was good,” said Lopez, who motivated the participants with her presentations on personal traits of a leader and leadership as and influence process. “With a very dynamic group of participants, I would say it was a success.”

Participants quickly learned that leadership is not black and white, but has many gray areas. How one chooses to lead often “depends on the situation,” and this idea was addressed throughout the weekend.

In setting the tone for the workshop, ALC Director Bandol Lim suggested that the eventual adoption of any one paradigm would require education and national debate. He emphasized the ALC’s goal of reducing the power distance between leader and follower through the encouragement of a leadership style that confronts challenges such as poverty reduction and development by helping to raise the ambitions of the follower.

The University of Cambodia’s visiting guest Raymie McKerrow, a professor from Ohio University in the U.S., moderated the weekend workshop and offered his personal insights to the current trends in leadership thought. McKerrow drew on his 20 years experience as a communicator, having taught U.S. business leaders the essential leadership skill of public speaking and corporate communication.

He said he felt the workshop achieved its goals in giving the participants a well-rounded understanding of leadership and encouraging participant involvement.

“Participants were able to express their own views on leadership practices, as well as ask questions to improve understanding or to request more specific advice as to leadership practices,” he said.

To view photos from the workshop weekend, please visit the ALC website, www.alc.uc.edu.kh.

100 Students Receive Scholarships to Study at UC

The University of Cambodia would like to congratulate the 2008 recipients of the Samdech Techo Hun Sen’s Vision – 100 Scholarships. These students have proven themselves to possess the best and brightest minds in Cambodia, through their high school academic achievements and their scores on the university’s scholarship exam, covering both general knowledge and English comprehension.

These UC first-years have received full-tuition to study in the field of their choice for the next four years. The university is proud to welcome them into the UC community.

Much appreciation goes to Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen and Dr. Rhiki Thakral of the Thakral Group of Companies in Singapore for making UC’s scholarship program possible. Over and over, Samdech Hun Sen has expressed his full support of Cambodian students enrolled in universities around the country. With the financial contributions of Dr. Rhiki Thakral, his colleagues and his family, 100 students will have the opportunity to attain a university education at UC, allowing them to be equal competitors and leaders in today’s globalized economy.

500 Students Receive Scholarships in Second Year of Scholarship Program

The University of Cambodia would like to congratulate the 2008 recipients of the Samdech Hun Sen – Handa National Scholarships. Five-hundred UC first-year students were honored in a ceremony presided by Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen on October 2, 2008.

Having proven their academic achievement throughout high school and receiving the top scores on the university’s scholarship exam, which covered both general knowledge and English comprehension, these students received full-tuition scholarships to study in the field of their choice during the next four years at UC. They possess the best and the brightest minds in Cambodia, and the university is proud to welcome them into the UC community.

Many thanks go to Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen and UC Chancellor Dr. Haruhisa Handa for making these awards possible in the second year of UC’s National Scholarship Program. Samdech Hun Sen has repeatedly underlined his full support for higher education and desires to see more Cambodian students in schools and universities nationwide. Dr. Handa’s generous funding of this project will turn that desire into reality. Both contributors envision equipping the younger generation both academically and intellectually, in order to empower them to contribute to Cambodian society and humanity as a whole, especially in terms of human resource development.