13th AUN Rectors’ Meeting: Hideki Shimazu Highlights AUN/SEED-Net’s Successful Collaborative Education Program

The 13th AUN Rectors’ Meeting took place last year in September but we, the AUN Secretariat, still have plenty more to share from the event as we settle into 2023. Continuing on with the agenda of “Driving University Excellence through Regional and International Cooperation”, Hideki Shimazu, Project Coordinator of AUN/SEED-Net, presented the impressive programs and achievements of the network in relation to the sub-agenda, “Driving World-Class Study Programme and Student Mobility”. The AUN/SEED-Net thematic network was initially conceptualized at the ASEAN-Japan Summit Meeting in 1997 and evolved into a full-scale operation in March 2003. Throughout the 20 years, the AUN/SEED-Net network has undergone the process of four Phases, each lasting 5 years. 

Hideki Shimazu presenting the phases of AUN/SEED-Net

At the meeting, Hideki Shimazu took to the podium to share about the main programs in Phase IV of AUN/SEED-Net. Through the 5 years, 2018 to 2023, AUN/SEED-Net successfully conducted 5 programs. One of them is the Collaborative Education Program (CEP), a result of University Consortiums collaborating together to empower Member Institutions to be able to further enhance their study programs, and this was the main focus of the presentation. The second program is the Alumni Support Program (ASP), a platform where alumni can strengthen their connection and network, which everyone in AUN/SEED-Net network can apply. Third is the Regional Conference that serves as a platform for AUN/SEED-Net members to exchange engineering knowledge. The fourth program is the Special Program for Research against COVID-19 (SPRAC) which provided funding opportunities for rapid research collaboration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, the fifth program presented was the ASEAN Engineering Journal (AEJ), a platform for scholars and researchers to publish their work. It was first launched in 2011 and indexed in Scopus in 2019. The ownership of AEJ was transferred over to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in April 2021 with 287 pages published and counting. 

To bring it all back to the sub-agenda, Hideki Shimazu expanded further on the CEP with highlights and features to show how the program enhanced study programmes and student mobility in the engineering field within Japan and ASEAN countries. He proudly presented impressive achievements of the following 10 University Consortiums, 6 with full financial support and 4 being co-financed:

• Collaborative Education Program on Biomass and Solar Renewable Energy System – Future Energy for the ASEAN Region (CEP-Future Energy)
• Collaborative Education Program for Sustainable Environmental Engineering Network (CEP-SEEN)
• Collaborative Education Program for Sustainable Management of Effluents from the Agro-Industry in Southeast Asia (CEP-SME-AISA)
• Collaborative EdUcation on UrBan GEology ASEAN (CUBE ASEAN)
• Global Academia-Industry Consortium for Collaborative Education (GAICCE)
• International Collaborative Education Program for Materials Technology, Education, and Research (ICE-Matter)
• Japan-ASEAN Collaborative Education Program (JACEP)
• Consortium of Master in Construction Management (MCM)
• Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology Collaborative Education Program (SIIT-CEP)
• Water and Wastewater Treatment Engineering Research Consortium (WATER)

The CEPs provided international mobility for over 70 involved students and totaling over 530 mobility trips, as well as hosting or being a part of more than 150 conferences within ASEAN and Japan. The grand goal of AUN/SEED-Net’s CEP is to strengthen the network and increase research collaborations of the academia and industry in the ASEAN and Japan region in order to enhance the ability for institutions to exchange knowledge and expand their scope of research. All the efforts of AUN/SEED-Net throughout 20 years of 4 phases has grown the network to be sustainable, making it ready for its next chapter. To know more about the future plans for AUN/SEED-Net, the latest developments of the network going into 2023 can be found in our recent article about The Signing Ceremony of Cooperative Framework of AUN/SEED-Net Transitional Period.