More Projects and Exposures

Going through November was another blast.

The to-do list was longer and more challenging. With the existing projects running and the new ones coming up, different sorts of tasks, ranging from facilitation to generating strategies, need to be completed. This month, I am exposed to new projects (i.e., LAURDS), new areas of existing projects (i.e., SEASIN) as well as the new discoveries from other sides of The Europe Office and GCU as a whole.

LAURDS PROJECT: Research Culture

The rationale of this project is that it aims to contribute to the knowledge economy of Latin American Universities through economies of expertise by the development of research capability and capacity. Besides developing research culture and strategies, the objective of LAURDS is also developing doctoral provisions.

On top of website review and recommendations, as a new project, LAURDS needs to be introduced to the public apart from partners around Latin America. This is accomplished by social media marketing strategy. Spending a few days in the week this month, I have prepared a document for LAURDS project social media marketing, i.e., Facebook.

eMarketer (2016) claims that there are more than 90% of Facebook users among all social media users in Latin America.

The social media marketing strategy and implementation should serve the purpose of raising awareness among the public about the project, its values, and its offers. Moreover, social media outreach should inform and engage university partners on what is happening around the project as well as to keep track of project updates and create open calls for participants in case of particular events. By executing social media plans such as video animation and vlogging, it creates tactics that boost views and engagement from the audience in general.

SEASIN And Other New Exposures

Over the past month, SISUs in Southeast Asia were mostly having soft launches. In Cambodia, National University of Management and Royal University of Phnom Penh have their own support units in the aim of promoting social innovation. Besides the mentioned digitally creative side of NUM SISU, I now acquire another role of coordinating SEASIN Cambodian partners. To make this happen, a Facebook group was created and touched up to bring together the representatives from each partner in Cambodia, both universities and enterprises, in order to share ideas and project accomplishments. It is also for facilitating purpose if there are any concerns, questions, or comments. To promote social innovation concept in the long run, there needs to be cooperation from different parties in the same country and that is what the group is about. 

Regarding other exposures, studying Glasgow Caledonian University is one of them. Cambodian students’ perspective towards the school is an observable case. It is true that Glasgow Caledonian University is actually interesting to research on. For starter…

GCU is already one of the top 10 modern universities in the UK according to REF (2014), also rated as the most dynamic and innovative school.

.And there are much more about GCU than you expected. This can appear attractive for the public, especially international students.

 

~ Rosanich Sou

 

Oh hey there Panama, Ireland, Uganda…

Hola amigos!  Sorry for the hiatus on here – we have been rather busy.  Read on…

We have been off on our travels this August and September, and we have another two trips in Vietnam and Chile at the end of September and beginning of October. Our project LASIN based in Latin America will take place in October in Santiago, and a visit to Vietnam to network and then attend the ENHANCE Project meeting are happening in September to October.

Firstly, we met in Panama City for our LAURDS project meeting with partners to discuss project management and the progress of the project. It rained a lot but it was nice to see friends and colleagues again. See the pictures below:

p5 p4  panana panama

Our meeting in Dublin was around Strategy For Change project with partners in Aveiro, Umea, Eindhoven, Dublin and Glasgow.  We heard from interesting academics and practitioners in the area of social innovation and attended a workshop with Fighting Words a creative writing enterprise in Dublin, before sampling some live Irish music in the pub!  Pictures below:

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Fighting words – www.fightingwords.ie/          Pictures below:

fighting fighting5 fight3 fighting2

Next was our meeting in Kampala, Uganda for the Enrich Project International Conference and coordination meeting.  Weather was warm and we had interesting talks from practitioners in the field of renewable and low carbon energy, as well as a Whistle Stop tour of Kampala before returning home:

 uganda7 uganda2 uganda3 uganda5uganda6whistle7 whistle6 whistle5 whistle4 whistle2 whistle uganda

We also hosted the eSTEM meeting where Egyptian partners visited our engineering labs during the week long capacity building meeting.   See pictures below:

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However we also still had colleagues around in the Office and we always welcome anyone who wants to pop by with questions and ideas or for a chat.

officepablorhona

For more information on the projects discuss see the links below, or go to our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates.

LASIN: lasin-eu.org/

ENHANCE: www.project-enhance.eu/

LAURDS: www.gcu.ac.uk/gsbs/staff/professordavidedgar/

Strategy for Change: strategy4change.eu/

Enrich: www.enrich-project.eu/

eSTEM: www.eelu.edu.eg/index.php/projects/Erasmus    /    www.estem.edu.eg

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheEuropeOffice/

Twitter: @GCU_TEO

 

Or write to us: Rose.Cawood@gcu.ac.uk