HCT Vice Chancellor Tayeb Kamali on Innovating Education for the Emirates

“We discovered our students react far better and they become great learners once you raise their bar. We have our annual conference every September and last year our theme was “Going Forward, Raising the Bar.” A lot of what we were teaching in the past few years, it’s becoming easy for our students. The skills that we were teaching them, it’s no longer as challenging. So what we are doing is (asking) how can we challenge our students to a higher level of learning, so that they can be satisfied in terms of the knowledge they acquire from us. At the same time, when they are so rich in knowledge, they can be great producers when they take responsibilities in the real world.”

Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) vice chancellor Dr. Tayeb Kamali in an interview with Arabic Knowledge@Wharton.

Can an All-women’s Education Better Develop Female Scientists?

“There is a sense that there are a lot more women in biology than physics, for example, where there are hardly any women students or teachers. Engineering is a little lower than that. Biology is where women have taken off. That’s the discipline of the future, largely because of biomedical applications and other implications.”
- Mary Anne Fox, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego.

Read the full interview: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arabic/article.cfm?articleid=2859

Once a Teacher, Now Fighting Human Trafficking in Asia

A chance encounter with some Vietnamese youths eager to learn English altered Michael Browsowski’s life forever.

The Australian moved to the Asian country eight years ago and set up Blue Dragon, a charity that now assists more than 1,200 children. CNN named Browsowski one of its “Heroes of 2011.” He tells Arabic Knowledge@Wharton that awareness programs make little difference to the impoverished villagers he seeks to help. Demonstrating other ways to earn income, he says, is much more effective in combating issues such as human trafficking.

“We’ve stopped trafficking from certain villages, so we figure if we can do that in a couple of small spots, why not across a province?” Browsowski said, “so that’s our current mission. But NGO’s (non-government organizations) don’t think enough like that: looking toward the end point, how do we stop this altogether. It’s all airy-fairy ‘let’s raise awareness.’

“I’m just tired to death of awareness-raising programs. They don’t work, even when it’s on MTV. You have to go to villages and talk to them, and offer another form of income.”

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/JOYvA9

An Emirati Research Pioneer Balances Business Success and Family Demands

When Maha Al-Farhan first applied for permits to start her clinical research firm in the United Arab Emirates, government officials didn’t even have a category to classify her business.

As a pioneer in clinical research in the Middle East, ClinArt International‘s founder  has plenty of advice for Arab female entrepreneurs, especially for Emirati women, who she says aren’t taking full advantage of the business opportunities available to them.

Al-Farhan speaks to Arabic Knowledge@Wharton about building a successful company, and balancing that with her personal duties as a wife and mother.

“My competitors starting doing the same a few years later which is a pleasure to me because it means we have a higher caliber of talent in the region and that’s what we need. So it’s a process, everyday you have to do something new. You have to evolve and as long as you concentrate and focus, you’ll be evolving all the time.”

Read the full interview here: http://t.co/VyiCeExc

UCL’s Malcolm Grant on Cost and Collaboration Challenges for Higher Education

As the U.K. government curtails funding to schools and colleges, University College London president and provost Malcolm Grant finds himself very popular with student protestors. But Grant acknowledges the burden put on students, who just over a decade ago enjoyed free higher education.

Grant says there are ways for schools to manage costs and still conduct worthwhile research and provide intellectual innovation. One critical step, he says, is greater collaboration between universities in researching key contemporary issues.

“Our view is in this globalized world it can’t be the universities alone that sit at home, we have to I think engage with globalization; and it’s not sufficient to do what we’ve done for decades, which is to have the world come to us,” he tells Arabic Knowledge@Wharton.

“Like most of the really research-intensive universities around the world, we are turning down huge numbers of proposals to establish ourselves elsewhere. We have to be able to do it at a pace that we can manage, because there’s a huge drawdown on senior management time to do any of these ventures. And we have to be satisfied that it fits with our mission and what we want to do.”

Read the full story here: http://t.co/1I8MsUIG

To Solve Arab World’s High Youth Unemployment Rates, Teach Blue Collar Skills

The Arab Spring has shown regional leaders the dangers of ignoring unemployment and poverty – since the 1990s the unemployment rate in the Arab world has been among the highest in the world, with an overall rate of 10.3% and a staggering 23.7% for those under age 25, according to the International Labour Organization.

One of the surest, quickest ways to provide relief, according to a new paper done by students with the Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies at Wharton, is through regional governments organizing and reforming vocational education training (VET) which would prepare trainees for mid-level jobs based on manual or practical activities, such as carpentry or hospitality.

There are stigmas that need to be overcome — VET is traditionally seen as last-chance  education for underperforming students — but if implemented effectively, the students argue VET could become a key component for solving the prevailing quandary of human capital development in the Middle East.

Read the full article here: http://bit.ly/wgLaDI

Wharton Alum’s Controversial Business Strategy: Failure is Key

Brilliant Mistakes is one of many business strategy books; however, what sets author and businessman Paul Schoemaker‘s strategy for business success apart is his controversial support of failure.

Some cultures and a number of corporate environments have stigmatized the very concept of failing. Schoemaker stresses the importance of learning from mistakes — to learn, he says, errors must be committed.

Schoemaker received his MBA and Ph.D. from the Wharton School. He currently continues to provide academic work for his Alma matter, in addition to running Decision Strategies International, Inc.

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/wXKaNe

The do’s and don’ts of classroom etiquette

The start of the school year opens the floodgates of university campuses to recently independent freshmen. Overwhelmed with their newfound liberation, some students drive themselves to excess, scrambling to experience previously taboo things. With no real check on one’s actions, professors find that some students may neglect all decorum.

In addition, from unprofessional interactions with a professor to blatant disregard for a course, students are often found dismissing appropriate classroom conduct. Wharton lecturer Barbara Roche even experienced “one student apply fingernail polish” during another’s mid-term presentations.

Even though there are always some difficult students, over-generalization should be prevented. Clearly such people are a minority or else the merit of acceptance into and completion of university would no longer exist.

Read the story here: http://huff.to/nU81iO

Getting into Wharton: High GMAT scores no guarantee of success

You have your heart set on getting into Wharton’s MBA program. If not Harvard, Princeton, or Booth. So what can you do to separate yourself from the hundreds of thousands of other eager applicants who have the same dream?

Forbesspoke to Judith Hodara Silverman, most recently as director of MBA admissions for the Wharton School, and Alex Fleming, a Wharton graduate and author, for tips on how to get into the business school of your choice.

Some of the advice should be common sense — do your homework before applying, double-check your application for errors — but other tidbits skewered some preconceived notions of what it takes to get into an elite business school.

As Silverman explains, when she was at Wharton, she saw plenty of applications with 790 GMAT scores denied because they had nothing else to offer than strong numbers.

Read the story here: http://onforb.es/ov0WL6

Breaking through: Women nearly half of incoming Wharton class

This year, women will make up nearly 45% of the incoming MBA class at Wharton, according to the school’s deputy director of MBA admissions. That’s up from 40% last year, he noted. Harvard Business School this year will also have its largest proportion of incoming women as well, with 39% female students.

Read the story here: http://read.bi/kvQq8F