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The Boston College Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) marked its groundbreaking partnership with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by hosting a three-day international seminar last month.
The seminar, held as part of the OECD’s Innovation, Higher Education, Research and Development (IHERD) program, focused on the role of research universities as drivers of the world’s knowledge networks. Some 40 participants from around the world took part, exploring the future prospects of research institutions in developing and middle-income countries.
Topics included current research networking platforms; new methods of communication; and the challenges facing the creation, expansion, and improvement of knowledge networks in an ever-more complex global environment. Session leaders included academics and researchers of global standing, as well as the CEOs of learned societies and bilateral development partnerships, from Australia, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand, Nigeria, and South Africa. The conference also featured local guests, from BC, Harvard, MIT and UMass-Boston.
The CIHE director, Monan Professor of Higher Education Philip Altbach, along with Lynch School of Education Professor Joseph O’Keefe, SJ, and IHERD coordinator Åsa Olsson opened the symposium.
A key outcome of the seminar will be the dissemination of its scholarly findings: By agreement with the UK-based Society for Research into Higher Education, seminar papers will be published in the spring 2013 issue of Studies in Higher Education, a leading European higher education journal.
For more about Center for International Higher Education, and its partnership with OECD, see the CIHE website at www.bc.edu/cihe.