The Times Higher Education (THE) Campus Live Asia was held online on December 14. Leaders from Asian universities and industries attended the summit themed "New Strategies for University Success". The strategic advantages and challenges of Asian universities were discussed at the summit which aimed to promote exchanges and explore new opportunities for cooperation. President Eden Woon of the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand delivered opening remarks at the summit. President Wang Qingyuan of Chengdu University (CDU) attended the opening ceremony and delivered a keynote speech by video in the first session.
The first session focused on "How can a more diverse and creative university leadership be nurtured?" , and was chaired by Kyoko Kusakabe, Professor of Gender and Development Studies at the Asian Institute of Technology. Vice Chancellor Chandrika Wijeyaratne of the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka, President Wang Qingyuan of CDU and President Joseph Lee of the Macau University of Science and Technology shared their leadership values and the challenges faced by their universities, as well as their successful experiences.
Wang Qingyuan pointed out that, given the challenges posed by the uncertainty of the current world to higher education, university leaders should actively implement strategies in leadership vision, leadership structure, university culture and sustainable learning environment to transform universities into open, inclusive, innovative, international and dynamic institutions. Wang Qingyuan noted that CDU is also facing challenges in its development process, such as how to deal with the relationships between local culture and world knowledge, between Education for Sustainable Development and lifelong learning, and between teaching workforce development and research capacity building, as well as how to attract more sustainable funding and valuable resources. Finally, he mentioned that CDU leadership team has implemented the internationalisation strategy within the context of three integrated development strategies, focusing on developing CDU into a first-class city university and cultivating high-quality applied talents with global competence. CDU has been exploring new concepts and approaches to deal with challenges related to such fields as university-city integration, international benchmarking, cross-border education, and scientific research cooperation, as well as teacher and student exchange.
The summit was co-hosted by the THE and the Asian Institute of Technology on December 14. It covered a series of keynote speeches by academic and industrial experts, a variety of panel discussions and seminars. Presidents and expert scholars from more than ten Asian universities were invited to attend the summit, including the Asian Institute of Technology, the Macau University of Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, the TERI School of Advanced Studies, the University of Colombo, Tribhuvan University, Chitkara University, O.P. Jindal Global University, St. Dominic Academy, James Cook University, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, and Zhejiang University. Educators attending the summit discussed such topics as "How do we increase diverse and creative leadership", "how to build a universal learning method suitable for all students in any environment", "How can we create an environment of psychological safety in which staff can be creative and informative", "How can we scale up the societal impact of our universities", and "how to establish a relationship with others in the network world".
Head of the Office of International Cooperation and Exchange at CDU attended the summit via video.
