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We are very pleased to announce that the University of the Free State, South Africa, is the 2010 recipient of the World Universities Forum Award for Best Practice in Higher Education. The Best Practice Award recognizes the most significant practices of the year and the University of the Free State’s implementation of ten interlocking innovations are certainly worthy of such recognition.

These innovations sought to transform the University in the face of “racial division, student failure and academic stagnation.”  The ten-point plan includes campus-wide racial integration among students, reinvigoration of academic culture through the hiring of new faculty, nurturing of the most promising young scholars, and sending

more than seventy first-year students to top American universities to assist their development into “non-racial” campus leaders.  The undergraduate curriculum was revised to promote a cross-disciplinarity approach to key societal problems; and both academic standards and support were raised.  Open access to campus leadership was facilitated through sessions with the vice-chancellor, providing opportunities for public discussion between senior leadership, staff and students.  The University extended this spirit of dialogue internationally through the inauguration of International Advisory Council of key thinkers and practitioners.  Perhaps the most innovate step was the identification of twenty of the most dysfunctional high schools in the province and build relationships with those schools. This university-school partnership is based on a strict contract of reciprocal commitments to increase the chances of black children attending university.

We feel that the University of the Free State’s ten innovations demonstrate the profound impact higher education practices can have when they are well conceived and implemented.  We applaud these innovations and the ways in which they promote racial harmony, student success and overall academic vitality.

The Best Practice Award will be announced formally at this year’s World Universities Forum, which will be held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education from 14-16 January 2011.  This marks the fourth year of the Forum, which was inaugurated in Davos, Switzerland in 2008 and was held in Mumbai, India in 2009, and again in Davos in 2010.  This year’s Hong Kong Forum will continue the discussion of the current role and future possibilities of the university, issues of especial concern in this era of dramatic change.  We are pleased that this discussion will include recognition of the University of the Free State and its tremendous efforts to address its own challenges.

Please welcome Dr. Shi Jinghuan as a plenary speaker for the 2011 World Universities Forum

SHI JINGHUAN

Dr. Shi Jinghuan is a professor and the Executive Dean of the Institute of Education, Tsinghua University. She also works as the Chairperson of Beijing Association of Women Professors and is a member of the 10^th and 11^th Beijing Municipal Political Council.

Dr. Shi Jinghuan has worked as a professor, the Deputy Department Chair and the Director of Research Institute of Education and Cultural History in Beijing Normal University for quite a number of years. She worked as a Fulbright professor in the University of Maryland at College Park, US in 1996 and as a specially Appointed Professor at the Center for Research and Development of Higher Education at Hokkaido University in Japan in 2006. She currently serves as an oversea Auditor, Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). She has broad academic publications in higher education, international and comparative education and history of education.

Dr. Shi Jinghuan has a rich experience in working with international organizations. She worked as the consultants for the projects of the World Bank, the UNDP, the UNESCO and the UNICEF.

For more information and additional speakers please visit our website.

We are pleased to welcome Professors Anthony B. L. Cheung and Xu Xiaozhou as Plenary Speakers at the 2011 World Universities Forum.

Anthony B.L. Cheung

Professor Anthony B. L. Cheung, GBS, JP is the President of The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Chair Professor of Public Administration, and Director of the Centre for Governance and Citizenship.

Professor Cheung received his PhD degree in Government from The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He has written extensively on privatization, civil service and public sector reforms, government and politics in Hong Kong and China, and Asian administrative reforms, having published 11 authored/edited books, 100 referred book chapters and journal articles, and presented over 150 conference papers and prestigious lectures/talks.

Professor Cheung is a Non-Official Member of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and also sits on several statutory and advisory bodies including: the Consumer Council (as chairman), the Housing Authority (as chairman of the Subsidized Housing Committee), Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation (member of Board of Directors), and the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council (as member).

Xu Xiaozhou

XU XIAOZHOU is Dean and Professor of College of Education, Zhejiang University. He holds the UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship Education at Zhejiang University. He is also Director of the Institute of Innovation Education and Entrepreneurship, the National Innovative Research Base of “Innovation Management and Sustainable Competitiveness.” He served as Senior Research Fellow at Institute of Eastern Asia Education, Korea in 2006. In 2008, he was bestowed title of honorary professor by the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on Comparative Education, Education Policy, Higher Education, and Educational Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education. In recent years, he as the editor-in-chief edits a range of influential series which cover “Entrepreneurship Education Research Series” (4 books, Zhejiang Education Press, 2010), “Education in China Series”(5 books in English, Zhejiang University Press & Homas & Sekey Books Press, 2009), “Education in China Since the past 60 Years” (4 books Zhejiang University Press. 2009) and “Changes in Higher Education Policy Series” (6 books, co-edited with Xu Hui, Zhejiang Education Press, 2007). His other important monographs include “Idea and Reality in Higher Education” (China Ocean University Press, 2009), ”Autonomy and Restriction: Comparative Studies on Policies of Universities” (Zhejiang Education Press, 2007), ”Excellence and Efficiency: Studies on Prior Development Strategies of University”(Zhejiang Education Press, 2007), “Modern Korean Higher Education”(Zhejiang University Press, 2007), “Educational innovation: Perspectives of internationalization” (co-edited with Roberto Giannatelli, Zhejiang Universtiy Press, 2006) and “Studies in the Recent Reforms of Higher Education Structure in the Europe and the United States” (Neimenggu University Press, 1997).

Please keep visiting http://www.UniversitiesForum.com for more updates and all of our conference news.

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