1st ASEAN Learning Network Executive Committee Meeting
It was on 28 July 2017 that council members of ASEAN Learning Network (ALN) celebrated a significant, memorable milestone. When ALN Chairman, Prof Dato’ Ir. Dr. Zainai Bin Mohamed, announced that the 1st ALN Executive Committee (ExComm) Meeting be held before the arrival of 2018, Board of Management and council members were overjoyed at the 22nd ALN Council Meeting and San Beda College graciously accepted the offer to host the inaugural meeting. ALN was established on 10 February 2009 with five founding institutional members and San Beda College (SBC) was one of them; the prominent role of SBC started even at ALN Formation meeting in late 2008. It is, therefore, a double joy for members to be able to visit Manila again for another good cause after SBC last hosted the 11th ALN Council Meeting in year 2012. All these would not have happened without the remarkable stewardship of Fr Aloysius Maranan, President of SBC and dedication as well as commitment extended by Dr Tita Evasco-Branzuela, Vice President of Linkages and International Affairs, supported by her excellent team.
The main goal of ALN network is to promote, develop and disseminate context-based knowledge in management, law, economics, social sciences and technology, for the betterment of people and societies in the region and at the same time, to promote academic excellence and practice-relevance as well as social responsibility among students and faculty in the member institutions. This involves collaborative learning experiences among member ASEAN universities and their partner communities, through teaching, research and management development. From five founding member institutions, ALN has grown to having sixteen member universities in the network. Such expansion generally calls for better structure and formation of organizational rules which require members’ consensus. It was therefore timely for ALN to hold its very first ALN ExComm Meeting by inviting all sixteen Heads of member institutions to attend.
The 1st ALN ExComm Meeting took place on 5 December 2017 at 3pm, with the five elected Executive Committee Members and the representatives of ten member universities. All present unanimously passed the proposal of appointing Deputy Executive Director (DED) of Philippines Chapter. Dr Tita Evasco-Branzuela, having been with the network and contributed actively for almost a decade, was naturally the best candidate and thus appointed as the DED of Philippines Chapter. Such appointment was made based on the given continual membership expansion in ALN and the diversity of needs of different member universities and countries. Having the DED – Malaysia Chapter (appointed earlier in 2015) and DED – Philippines Chapter in force, provides us with a way forward in the formation of smaller membership clusters into the future, to facilitate greater membership involvement, better and more appropriate membership services and more effective growth and development of the ALN.
We are also pleased that the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City has offered to host the 1st Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the ALN in Vietnam (now set to be held on August 3, 2018). Individual members and institutional members of ALN are now invited to register/re-register as official members based on the new constitution.
Other highlights discussed at the meeting include the forthcoming Social Enterprise for Economic Development (SEED) Program (ALN flagship program) which will take place in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand this year. Members also agreed on numerous collaborative activities to be jointly organized in the following areas: students exchange, faculty members exchange, conference, e-colloquium, research and publication, dual degree program, contextual and international learning and collaboration (academic seminar/ conference), English communication program, internship/ industrial attachment and students mobility program.
The meeting was adjourned at 7.30pm. ALN Chairman, Prof Dato’ Ir. Dr. Zainai Bin Mohamed congratulated SBC for organizing this inaugural meeting and thanked the organizing team for its great hospitality. Members of meeting were then invited to participate in yet another achievement of ALN as a whole and specifically, SBC, for hosting the 1st SEED International Conference (1SEEDIC) which attracted more than 30 presenters from ASEAN countries to share their learning and research experience related to the flagship program. Till then, more progressive news can be reported after ALN AGM in August 2018. Heartiest congratulations once again to San Beda College for bringing all the academics together, embracing the ASEAN spirit of ‘unity in diversity’.