The 5th QS-Maple (Middle East and North Africa Professional Leaders in Education) Conference and Exhibition, co-hosted by Qatar University (QU) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), concluded on Wednesday with the presentation of the QS Scholarship Award and the QS Stars Certificate.
The scholarship awardees were two QU students: Nihal Abdulrahiman of first-year computer science (GPA 3.92) and Esraa el Din of first-year engineering (GPA 3.75).
QS Stars Certificates were awarded to University of Santo Tomas, Philippines (four stars), Ain Shams University, Egypt, and Effat University, Saudi Arabia (three stars each).
The award ceremony followed a packed programme that included the second QS2 debate of the conference on the motion “Private universities are more effective in partnering with industry than their publicly-funded counterparts.”
Keynote addresses were delivered by University of Groningen president Prof Dr Sibandes Poppema on “How a university can combine top research, societal relevance and industry relations” and Academy for Academic Leadership senior consultant Dr Wyatt Hume on “Rankings relative to mission”.
Discussion sessions on Day Two were presented in four tracks headlined Quality Assurance and Accreditation; Learning, Teaching and the Student Experience; Managing Higher Education and Internationalisation; Research Strategy, Knowledge Transfer and Innovation; and Graduate Employability and Employer Engagement.
Participants included higher education experts and university faculty and specialists from education-related organisations from Afghanistan, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UAE, the US, and Vietnam.
QU president Prof Sheikha Abdulla al-Misnad said: “It has been our pleasure to welcome you and to exchange ideas and experiences on areas that are special to our respective institutions and special to the social, political and economic dynamics of our respective regions. We learned that higher education is not just a matter of designing programmes and building research - it is also about understanding the dictates of the development of our societies and working alongside it instead of in front of it.”
QS Asia Quacquarelli Symonds CEO Mandy Mok expressed her appreciation to all participants for making the conference an amazing event full of insightful sessions and energising debates and entertaining and informative panel discussions. “We would expect many promising future partnerships to emerge from these interactions,” she said.
Mandy Mok and QU students Nihal Abdulrahiman and Esraa el Din with the award.
