Vice Chancellor's Dinner Speech 31 Jan 2016

Ambassador of Japan HE Matumoto, Ambassador of the European Union, HE Giogkarakis-Argyropoulos, Governor of Jiwaka Dr. Tangamp, Colonel Wrakonei (Commanding Officer  Joint Services Academy), Invited Guests, Representatives of so many business houses, Chancellor Sir Nagora Bogan, Council Members (Judd, Wissink, Worthington, McClay, and Bidang), Students, Professors, Faculty, Staff, all friends and partners of UNITECH,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Overview of 2015

First of all, on behalf of UNITECH's management team we like to welcome you all to this second Vice Chancellor's dinner, which we hold before the opening of the academic year. My wife Paulina (also representing Buk Bilong Pikinini) and I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very healthy, happy and productive new year, and wish you all the best in 2016.

Treekangaroo

I thank you all for your support last year, with special thanks to our Chancellor Sir Nagora Bogan, the private sector – our graduate's employer as well as our university's essential suppliers – and our many foreign partners, represented here by Ambassador of Japan and the European Union.

Opening Academic Year 2016: On Being a Good University (part 4 - 1 Feb 2016)

Speech held by Dr. Albert Schram, Vice Chancellor, at the opening of the academic year on Monday 1 February 2016, Duncanson Hall, West Taraka Campus.

Twitter: @albertschram

Clouds or Blue Sky?

Is the sky blue, or clouded in 2016?

Ambassador of Japan HE Matumoto, Ambassador of the European Union, HE Giogkarakis-Argyropoulos, Governor Hon. Dr. William Tongamp, Honoured Guests, Students, Faculty, Staff ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to UNITECH, where tomorrow's leaders are forged. 

Hereby, I declare the Academic Year 2016 officially opened.

Let me start by thanking the Orientation Week committee for putting together a wonderful program, and the Estates and Services Dept and Central Teaching Facilities for showing off today all our facilities in the best possible light.

More than 60% of our students are the first in the family to go to University, and over 20% are the first in their communities. Many of you, therefore, do not know what a university is exactly and how it operates. Today, in this speech I want to provide all students some guidance.

Leadership Lessons from the UNITECH Saga

Speech delivered for the Voice Inc 1st "Nation Builder Conference", Waigani, 15-21 January.

Leadership Lessons from the UNITECH saga: how the students did it.

(750 words – 4 minutes)

UNITECH students peacefully demonstrating in the provinces

The UNITECH saga between 2012-2014, is one of the few cases in which a PNG government had to concede completely to the demands of a civil society, in this case the student movement. An insightful article about the student movement was published in Times Higher Education, in the middle of the crisis. A number of important lessons can be learned from the student movement on how to influence public policy through peaceful and democratic activism.

Regrettably, not everybody has learned these lessons, and today some are still trying to make life difficult for the UNITECH students and its new leadership team. In 2014, for example, some of these same people managed surreptitiously, without consultation to abolish the autonomy of University Councils in the new Higher Education Act. Unsurprisingly, recently some of these university councils appealed to the government to have the offending article 109 repealed. No answer is expected any time soon. A more recent challenge is the withdrawal of HECAS scholarship money for the students. We met with the Minister of higher education to ask him to fund the scholarships. Promises were made, but no answer was received.

Leadership for Green and High Performing Universities

- DRAFT DO NOT QUOTE -

Dr. Albert Schram

Papua New Guinea University of Technology

Introduction

Universities are complex organizations with a triple mission: teaching, research and outreach (or the third mission). Their operations dimension can have a considerable environmental impact depending on the number of students and staff, whether they manage residential campuses or not. Their economic impact regionally or even nationally can be substantial, in terms of generation of employment and their need to utilize a wide range of suppliers. In this article, we try to shed light on the question whether for universities better environmental performance is an optional element of their strategy, or is it linked to overall performance?

India & Papua New Guinea

First Impressions Count

With a population of almost 1.3 billion people India is the second most populous country after China, and the world's largest democracy. It has 10 languages spoken by more than 30 million people each, and a total of 454 different languages, not counting dialects. Papua New Guinea of course tops the ranks. Dealing with diversity is therefore a common challenge.


Illustration 1: Language diversity per country

India counts 6 major different scripts, which are impossible to read for the non-initiated. It has 10 cities of more than 1.5 million inhabitants. Around Mumbai, we find the worlds largest movie industry. The city was called Bombay in colonial times, hence Bollywood) It is the largest dairy producing country with the largest dairy cooperative in the world. Indian railways is one of the largest employers in the world, with more than 1.5 million employees.

The Climate Just Changed For The Better: the Paris Deal at COP21 on 12 December 2015

- DRAFT DO NOT QUOTE -

Lecture delivered at Anna University, Chennai, India on 23 December 12 pm.

Dr. Albert Schram

We are faced now with the fact that tomorrow is today. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words “Too late”. 

(Martin Luther King, New York, 4 April 1967.

Introduction

Today, at Anna University in Chennai (India) I would like share few thoughts on the global climate change negotiations, and the outcome of the recent Conference of Parties held in Paris (COP21). I do not pretend to be an expert in the field. For over 2 decades, I merely observed the development of climate science, and the interaction of scientists with policy makers, in particular when Inter-Governmental Panel 4th Assessment Report (IPPC-AR4) was presented at the European Commission in Brussels in 2007.

My interest in the climate change debate, and countries' long-term sustainable development was first raised in 1993 during the lectures and classes of Professor (now Lord) Nicholas Stern at the London School in Economics, the later author of the 2007 Stern Report on climate change. Later, I published in international journals as an environmental economists on various institutions designed to curb emissions (Alpizar, Requate & Schram 2004, Schram & Hussey 2009).

Papua New Guinea: failing to develop or developing to fail?

Lecture given on 4 December at the Cairns Institute, James Cook University.

Dr. Albert Schram, Vice Chancellor
Papua New Guinea University of Technology

On twitter the link to the powerpoint presentation: "PNG: failing to develop, or developing to fail?" Neither: long-term trends are positive http://bit.ly/1Nvx9ZG"

Introduction

Papua New Guinea is a poster child for failure to develop since independence in 1975, and is one of only a handful of countries that failed in achieving a single of the 8 Millenium Development Goals in 2015.

Today, PNG's state institutions are still extractive and exclusive in nature. State institutions merely benefited the elites and their extended families. More than anything else, this explains why over the last decade none of the resource rents have contributed to better outcomes in health and education.

State  institutions are weak in terms of service delivery to the population, but strong when protecting the interest of those in power. When something needs to be done to help the poor, a swift response is usually lacking. However, if powerful interests are at stake, then drastic and effective action is taken quickly.