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University Development

II/1/4 University Development

According to UNU/IIST's Programme (I/2/7), one of our main tasks should be to help universities in developing countries attain the highest quality education (including course curricula) in computing science and software engineering.

Many of these universities suffer not only from a serious lack of resources, including basic text books and teaching materials, but also from isolation from the international academic community: not only do they tend to have very little money available for international travel, but electronic connections via the internet are often prohibitively expensive and unreliable, even when they exist at all. This makes it very difficult for them to keep abreast of advances in the subjects they teach, particularly in a field such as computer science which changes so rapidly.

The Curriculum Development project (II/1/3) addresses part of this need, though it is limited to training university teachers in formal methods. The University Development project complements this by providing training for university teachers in all areas of computer science. It thus strengthens computer science teaching across the board in universities in developing countries.

Under this project, computer science lecturers from universities in developing countries are selected as UNU/IIST fellows, but instead of coming to study at UNU/IIST in Macau they study at partner universities in developed countries. Generally, these fellowships cover one semester at one of these partner universities, during which time the fellow will be expected to study at least four courses offered by the partner university. These courses may be at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, depending on the specific needs of their own university (which are normally determined by discussion between the university and a member of UNU/IIST's staff).

The project also provides supporting course materials for all the courses studied by the fellows (lecture material, student's notes, course exercises, recommended text books, etc.), and these become the property of the fellows' home departments at the end of the fellowships. The fellows thus have all the knowledge and materials they need to introduce the courses they have studied into the curricula of their own departments after they complete their fellowships.

In order to maximize the benefits from the project for any given country, it is run as far as possible on a "knowledge sharing" basis. This means first that different fellows selected for the project from the same developing country study different sets of courses, and second that they have to share the course material and text books they acquire through the project as well as their knowledge about the new courses they have studied with lecturers from other universities in the same country when they return home.

Standard UNU/IIST Fellowship conditions as described in IV/2 apply, though with the following modifications:

1. Fellowships are offered only as part of a long term plan for a particular university, group of universities, or country where UNU/IIST perceives a need for a general improvement in higher education in computer science.

2. Fellowships are only open to computer science teachers from universities in developing countries. In addition, fellows are expected to continue to teach computer science at a university in their home country for a period of at least three years from the end of their fellowship, otherwise UNU/IIST may ask the fellow to reimburse the cost of the fellowship.

3. Fellows require a very good level of English - much higher than is needed to become a fellow in Macau - because they will be living and working in an environment in which English is not only the native language but is also spoken to some extent colloquially. (It may be possible in future for fellowships to be offered in countries which are not English-speaking.)

4. Fellows receive a monthly stipend of US$ 900 to take account of the higher cost of accommodation at the partner universities compared to accommodation in Macau.

Currently we have connections with 11 institutions in 5 industrial countries.

University Development
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