Working together to address challenges

Students wearing protective face masks have their temperatures taken while entering their college campus in Manila. - AFP

I WAS in Helsinki, Finland a few weeks ago attending the “Top Management Programme” organised by Advance Higher Education. With me on the programme were leaders from 20 other universities from the United Kingdom, Australia and China.

We were on a learning trip to explore what makes the Finnish education systems, and the Finnish society in general, innovative and highly productive. Besides discussing policy, academic innovation and universities’ funding, what was one of the key topics that all these university leaders, and the Finnish hosts, spoke about? Yes, you guessed it, it was the Covid-19 (coronavirus) and how our universities are responding to this global health emergency.

This is not surprising given that some of the grim predictions anticipate that the death toll may reach 65 million people within a year based on a computer simulation performed by Dr Eric Toner, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security. The huge number of predicted deaths is not merely due to the contagious nature of the virus, but also is a function of how connected our world is and how easy it is for people to travel thousands of kilometres in mere hours, carrying the virus with them.

Living in a connected world means that ideas, products, innovations as well as diseases can travel very fast. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Researchers have discovered evidence that the old Silk Road has contributed to the spread of the bubonic plague, anthrax, and leprosy.

Besides coming up with concrete plans to keep our community of students and staff safe and healthy as the crisis unfolds, the question I ask myself, as a leader in a globally connected university, is how can we prepare our students to live and be happy, successful and safe in our increasingly connected world, especially as this connectivity is expected to accelerate as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how technology is lowering the threshold and cost of travel and exchange of goods, both physical and digital.

First of all, the fact that the same networks that carry innovations can carry pathogens and disease should not be an excuse to lock ourselves down. On the contrary, our only hope to deal with the negative side effects of being connected, is to further collaborate with each other and build more trust and understanding across borders.

For instance, our chances to control the Covid-19 outbreak and to find a vaccine for it are directly related to the ability of scientists and health officials from countries around the world to work collaboratively and exchange information openly.

In addition to maintaining a globally connected mindset, succeeding in this brave new world requires new skills and competencies that our schools and universities ought to ensure that our graduates have in abundance. These include emotional intelligence, human collaborative skills, critical thinking, creativity and innovation.

The approach to education that focuses, besides academic excellence, on building positive character traits such as compassion, wisdom, sense of purpose, empathy and growth mindset is called Positive Education.

In order to deliver positive education, Heriot-Watt University developed the EmPOWER programme that takes the students on a leadership development journey of leading self, leading teams, leading communities and leading enterprise.

One of the programme’s cornerstones is the development of self-awareness through articulating a personal impact statement that outlines how each student plans to use their life, knowledge and special skills to make the world a better place. Another key element is nurturing a positive and optimistic attitude through encouraging the community

to express gratitude and pay attention to all that is going right in our lives.

The programme is integrated into the students’ study journey and is documented through a transcript that brings to the fore the various developmental activities that they went through. This will help future employers appreciate the competencies that the graduates possess and help the graduates stand out in a crowded market.

Developing our young people to be connected and able to effectively operate in a connected world is key for us to address the grand challenges of our time. Be it the environmental issues, the energy challenges or inequality, we need everyone working together if we would have a chance at addressing those.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said:

“If civilisation is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.”

Personally, I have no doubt that we will defeat Covid-19. We have always done so. The key thing is to do so in a way that brings the best out of all of us, through compassion, empathy, wisdom and understanding.

PROF MUSHTAK AL-ATABI

Provost and CEO

Heriot-Watt University Malaysia