25 August 2022

On-Site/Remote AUN-QA Council Meeting 2022

By
Patitin Lertnaikiat
AUN Programme Officer;

As restrictions from the pandemic are starting to loosen, the AUN-QA Council Meeting this year was able to take place on-site at Bangkok, Thailand on 16 August 2022. The venue of the event was the Eastin Grand Hotel Sathorn. AUN-QA Technical Team members, Special Advisors to the AUN Executive Director, and AUN-QA Resource Persons across the ASEAN region convened for this council meeting in Thailand, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam. Because some ASEAN countries were not yet fully open for travel, participants were still able to attend the council meeting online through Zoom. Multitudes of agendas in relation to uplifting the quality of AUN-QA activities were discussed with key decisions to move forwards in strength, with the overall picture being:

  • Reports from AUN-QA Task Force/Subcommittee
  • Updates and Progress Reports from AUN-QA Secretariat
  • New matters for discussion from AUN-QA
  • Approval of New AUN-QA Associate Members
  • Approval of the New AUN-QA Lead Assessor

AUN-QA Inst level 2.0.JPG

The meeting began with an update regarding the revision of the Guide to AUN-QA Assessment at Institution Level Version 2.0 from the AUN-QA task force. The Meeting acknowledged the updates and revisions of 2.0. The Meeting also acknowledged a newer version of the Guide to be finished by November 2022 with expected full implementation to be 6 months after its adoption.

The Council Meeting then continued on with updates and progress reports from AUN-QA Secretariat, first beginning with a quick acknowledgement of updates from the AUN Executive Director on AUN engagements. The Meeting then proceeded to discuss critical areas of improvement for the AUN-QA Programme Assessments and the ongoing plans moving forward to have all assessments be on-site from March 2023. Special circumstances where on-site assessments are not possible will be considered by the AUN-QA Secretariat. For the rest of updates and progress reports from AUN-QA Secretariat, the Meeting acknowledged the following agendas:

  • AUN-QA Tier 1 Training (on-site)
  • Recognition from the VQA, Ministry of Education, Viet Nam
  • Engagement with the Ministry of Education, Brunei
  • AUN-QA Business Trip to Indonesia and Viet Nam
  • Updates on the CALOHEA Project

AUN-QA Council meeting in progress.JPG

After thorough discussions and acknowledgements of recent and current agendas, the Council Meeting looked towards new matters for consideration. The Meeting discussed and provided suggestions for the matter on the AUN-QA Programme Assessment regarding programme specification. Following this, AUN-QA Trainings and other matters related to AUN-QA activities were discussed and acknowledged.

Before the Council Meeting ended, two agendas requiring approval were presented. The Meeting considered and accepted 6 new AUN-QA Associate Member universities as follows:

The Philippines:
1. De La Salle University-Dasmariñas (Private)
2. University of Nueva Caceres (Private)

Vietnam:
3. Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics and Finance (Private)
4. Hong Bang International University (Private)
5. Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (Public)
6. Tay Nguyen University (Public)

As for the final approval of the Council Meeting, Prof. Dr. Aleth Therese L. Dacanay, University of Santo Tomas was approved to be promoted as a Lead Assessor. Before the meeting concluded, two other matters were brought up for quick discussion, namely the IQA Subcommittee Meeting and the AUN-QA Assessors’ Calibration. The AUN-QA Council Meeting of 2022 then officially concluded.