AUN News

As ASEAN and Australia commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the ASEAN-Australia Dialogue Relationships; the AUN Secretariat, with facilitation by ASEAN Focus Group (AFG) and Study Melbourne, had the opportunity to deepen the ties between AUN and different key stakeholders of Australian higher education sector including seven Victorian universities, THE, NEAS Australia, and more in the Victorian Universities Roundtable under the ASEAN-Australia Education Dialogue. With academic exchange being one of the bedrocks for people-to-people relationships, the Victorian higher education sector has been enthusiastic in exploring and fostering new ties with the ASEAN region.

Art and culture play a large role in promoting harmonious artistic and spiritual pursuits of humankind and driving socioeconomic development through the creative industry. Recognising that higher education is key to safeguarding art and culture while fostering creative industries, the 4th AUN-ASEAN+3 Youth Cultural Forum Thailand Chapter (AUN-AYCF Thailand) was organised on 6-11 April 2024 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, bringing together over 120 of the country’s young talents in art, theatre and performance to learn, practice and showcase various traditional and contemporary art forms prevalent not only in Thailand, but also across the ASEAN region.

Since its establishment in 1998, the ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) Network has continuously grown to become a leading regional network of higher education quality assurance in ASEAN, with a team of seasoned experts and professionals driving its mission. In this third instalment of the AUN Expert Series, we proudly spotlight the Official AUN-QA Assessors, the bedrock of the AUN-QA Programme Assessment and AUN-QA Institutional Assessment.

AUN-QA Trainings serve as the venue for disseminating the seed of quality assurance culture and nurturing the next generation of quality assurance practitioners for the ASEAN higher education sector. In this second instalment of the Introducing AUN Experts series, we would like to introduce you to the official AUN-QA Training Specialists who are leading this mission with top-notch insight and valuable lessons to the quality assurance community of ASEAN.

After bidding its festive goodbye to another fruitful year of 2023, AUN is actively working with the network’s premier Member Universities as well as external partners to make 2024 a year full of youth platforms and activities for different groups and cahoots of ASEAN university students and talents. This year, several of AUN Flagship Youth Activities make their grand return while the brand-new, ASEAN-first AUN Summer Camp aims to bolster the cross-borderly interregional cultivation of future-ready and ASEAN-rooted young talents.

2023 has been a highly eventful year for the ASEAN University Network (AUN) Secretariat and its thematic networks as many events and activities returned after the COVID pandemic subsided. As such, the AUN Secretariat is proud to present a wrap up to 2023, showcasing all the university network’s major events and activities throughout the year!

Staying healthy is critical to living a good life, but it has become increasingly difficult to do so in this current age of technology-enhanced convenience, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, and other related habits. Following the pandemic, the world has also seen the rise of mental health issues caused by the limited social interaction due to prolonged isolation. At the ASEAN University Network Health Promotion Network (AUN-HPN) 8th International Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting, the network’s member universities gather once again to address these pressing health issues in society and share their best practices in health promotion mission.

Since its establishment in 2014, ASEAN University Network Health Promotion Network (AUN-HPN) has been actively contributing to university health promotion across the ASEAN region. In this connection, the book "Management and Strategy: How AUN-HPN Became a Driving Force for Regional Health Promotion" has been published by the AUN Secretariat team in coordination with AUN-HPN to observe and catalogue the good practices in managing the thematic network of universities. To do so, this book focuses on the work and perspectives of AUN-HPN’s past and current thought leaders as well as the observation of AUN-HPN flagship activities.

Prince of Songkla University (PSU), in collaboration with the Institute of Software Engineering and Quality Management (ISEM) and ASEAN University Network (AUN), co-hosted the workshop on the Quality Standardization of University's ICT System and Management (AUN-ICT) On 7-8 November 2023 in Bangkok. Set to continue with the work resulting from its first iteration, this workshop delved further into detail of what can ensure the success of AUN-ICT development and implementation as a world-class, comprehensive and multifaceted standardisation framework tailored specifically for universities.

Following the success of the Internal Quality Assurance System Design and Development Workshop in March 2023, Viet Nam, the AUN-QA IQA Redesign Taskforce was established and recently conducted its first meeting on 20 - 21 October 2023 in Bangkok. Through the intensive discussion on existing Viet Nam and Cambodia IQA frameworks and the root-cause analysis of the workshop in Viet Nam, the outcome of this meeting will pave the way for the future of ASEAN IQA and the task force will be at the forefront!

The 38th ASEAN University Network Board of Trustees (AUB-BOT) Meeting concluded with an astounding success on 6 July 2023, with gracious hosting from Universiti Malaya. This annual meeting serves as an opportunity for the members of AUN’s Board of Trustees to be updated on the latest activities of AUN, discuss its direction, and set a vision for its future. This year, the members of our Board of Trustees were up for a long list!

Change is fast approaching on all fronts, but ASEAN universities are ready to take on it. In the 14th AUN Rectors’ Meeting held on 5 July 2023, with the gracious hosting of Universiti Malaya, leaders from AUN Universities demonstrated how ASEAN higher education can navigate the changing tide of global higher education. Is AI changing education as we know it? Is knowledge from universities no longer relevant? Hear it from the leaders of AUN Universities.