Post Conference Message

5 December 2009

Dear UCEC Participants,

Salam sejahtera (meaning greetings of well being in malay).

I hope that you are well and rested from the UCEC conference but intellectually stimulated, challenged and inspired by the diverse ideas, exchange, and innovative examples of university-community engagement from the various sessions and conversations.

The conference was a success because each of you brought your keen interest, passion and readiness to share and learn, as well as to have fun and laughter amidst serious deliberations - as many of you have appreciatively expressed how much you enjoyed the impromptu dance and cultural exchange at the conference dinner. Indeed this conference marks an important milestone in Asia, as the first conference on university-community engagement in Malaysia and in Asia.

Congratulations to each of you and all of us as part of this historic endeavour. Do stay in touch and share with us your ideas and actions on how you plan to take this agenda forward in your respective contexts. Do drop a line to let us know what key ideas/issues/questions have crystalised for you from the conference (every insight is important and there is no right or wrong answer!). Let us know if you have suggestions on how we can continue to learn and support each other in this very important but rather underdeveloped area of work especially among the academe. As highlighted in some sessions there are existing fora and channels to discuss and publish (not just in referred journals but more importantly where the research process, products/outcome can be meaningfully used by the various partners) this area of work especially when it moves beyond the level of voluntarism or community service to genuine engagement and engaged scholarship.

Thank you very much again for each of your contribution, including the hard work of ‘invisible’ colleagues and workers in helping to ensure that everything went well. We look forward to learning more about your work in the next UCEC. Hopefully in Thailand (no pressure Thai colleagues, but will be very nice to confer again in Thailand in 2011)! I am attaching a copy of (a) UNESCO’s Policy Brief for the WCHE-2009, (b) Communiqué of UNESCO’s World Conference on Higher Education (Paris, 2009) which underscores the importance of the social responsibility of institutions of higher education, including the recognition of community-university partnerships and indigenous knowledge systems, and (c) GACER’s Declaration for your perusal.

We hope that this conference has provided a firm basis and framework for your continuing work in this area. In line with the principle of access to knowledge and information in community engagement, all power-point presentations (including the welcome message from UNESCO and Barbara Holland’s video presentation) are currently being uploaded at the conference website - http://www.usm.my/icn/ucec/. If you have any objection to this kindly let me know IMMEDIATELY. The medley of conference pictures put together by Nobert will also be uploaded (thanks much Nobert for taking up this task so willingly).



Best wishes in your continuing transformative engagements. Have a joyous rejuvenating end of year celebration with your friends, family, the people you work with and your respective faith based communities. Journey safely into a peaceful and healthy 2010.

With deep appreciation from us all at UCEC-2009, USM.

Warm regards,
leanheng
Chair, UCEC Program Sub-committee
UCEC 2009 website: http://www.usm.my/icn/ucec/


Presenters of all Parallel Sessions: We would like to register our special appreciation for your substantive contribution to make possible a varied and interesting program for the conference. If you would like your paper to be considered/reviewed for a possible publication kindly let me know immediately (at this email) and submit your full paper by December 30, 2009. Do communicate before you commence to rework on your paper as we would like you to go beyond describing your work to align with and draw lessons/insights in relation with the thrust of the conference.

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