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Penina Mlama |
On the advice of Commonwealth Ministers of Education, Commonwealth Secretary-General His Excellency the Rt. Hon. Donald C. McKinnon, has named Professor Penina Mlama, Executive Director, Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), to COL's Board of Governors as the regional appointment for Africa.
Professor Mlama is currently on leave-of-absence from her long-time position of professor of theatre arts at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. She was part of the team that pioneered the Theatre for Development movement in Africa in which artistic creation is used by the community as a tool for education analysis of development challenges, and a search for solutions.
In addition to her book Culture and development: The popular theatre approach in Africa (Uppsala; 1991), where Professor Mlama outlines some of her experiences in theatre for development work, she has also published eight plays in Kiswahili and many articles in the areas of culture and development, theatre in education, creative writing, gender and girls' education.
She also served as Head of Department, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Deputy Vice-Chancellor/ Chief Academic Officer at the University of Dar es Salaam and is a member of many national and international Boards including Chair of the Africa Region for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
With Chapters in thirty-three countries in Sub- Saharan Africa, the Nairobi-based FAWE is engaged in improving access, retention and participation of girls in education in Africa. www.fawe.org
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Marshall Elliott |
Also, the Government of United Kingdom has named Dr. Marshall Elliott, Chief Education Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID), as its new representative on COL's Board. Dr. Elliott has previously been in DFID field programme positions in Africa and India and, prior to joining the Department in 1995, was Head of Management and Director of Research at the Sunderland Business School (University of Sunderland). Britain is entitled to a seat on the Board by virtue of its status as a major donor. www.dfid.gov.uk
DFID's former Chief Education Adviser, Professor Stephen Matlin, was Britain's previous representative on COL's Board. He left the Department at the end of June 2002 to pursue opportunities as a consultant.
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Angela Kwan |
Ms. Angela Kwan was appointed Development Manager for COL in November 2002. The position was created in order to bring together all those projects that COL undertakes on a fee-for-service basis. Ms. Kwan, who previously served as Project Officer in the President's office for five years, is now responsible for seeking out new fee-for-service opportunities where COL can extend its value to the Commonwealth, within its mandate. Prior to immigrating to Canada in 1996, Ms. Kwan was Head of Administration and Accommodation at the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong (now Open University of Hong Kong). www.col.org/akwan
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Lewis Perinbam |
In June, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed Mr. Lewis Perinbam, O.C., COL's Senior Adviser, External Relations, to the Board of Governors of the Canadian Centre for Management Development. Created in 1991, the Centre is dedicated to enhancing public sector management capabilities, excellence in teaching and research into public sector management, and promoting a strong corporate culture in the federal public service. Mr. Perinbam has had a career that has spanned three continents: Asia, Europe and North America. He has served as Executive Director of the World University Services of Canada, the first full-time Secretary-General of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the founding Executive Director of the Canadian University Service Overseas and as a Vice-President of the Canadian International Development Agency.
Staff consultant, Dr. Walter Uegama, was honoured by the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) for his pioneering work in promoting higher education in the Americas. CONAHEC is a tri-national (Canada, USA and Mexico) consortium advancing collaboration, co-operation and community-building among higher education institutions in North America. Through his career at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Dr. Uegama has been an active supporter of CONAHEC and, representing UBC, was a founding member of the Consortium's Executive Committee from 1994. He is working with COL and South Asian open universities in developing a collaborative Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration/Master of Public Administration distance education programme. http://conahec.org
Mr. Patrick Julien retired as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of COL International at the end of September. Mr. Julien joined COL in 1998, on secondment from the Canadian Department of Industry, and was chiefly responsible for establishing COL's affiliate, COL International.
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Chris Christodoulou |
Chris Christodoulou, 1932 - 2002
One of the founding members of COL's Board of Governors, Dr. Anastasios "Chris" Christodoulou, CBE, died in May of this year. He was Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) from 1980 to 1996 and a former Secretary of the U.K. Open University. Dr. Chris had a lifelong commitment to the Commonwealth that began in 1956 in what is now Tanzania where he was a District Commissioner and Magistrate until 1962.
Upon his death, the Guardian noted that he was one of "three people who turned the idea for a "university of the air" into the reality of the Open University." And Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan, President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, remembered him as one whose "efforts helped to awaken the consciousness of Commonwealth leaders to recognise the potential of open and distance learning to bring education within the reach of countless numbers of people whom conventional systems had ignored."
In an obituary published in The Bulletin (Association of Commonwealth Universities, London, August 2002: www.acu.ac.uk/member_services/bulletin), former President of the University of Waterloo (Canada), Dr. James Downey, remembers Dr. Chris's significant contribution to the ACU and higher education in the Commonwealth, concluding by saying:
Naturally charming, diplomatically adroit, at home with people of all races and ethnicities, a brilliant organiser and manager, and together with his wife Joan a consummate host, Chris was the very model of a secretary general. He once said that he didn't have the right stuff to be a vice-chancellor. In this, as I told him, he was wrong. He would have made a superior academic leader in any role he chose. But I am not alone in being thankful that he chose the ones he did, not just for the wonderfully beneficial influence he exercised so broadly, but because it was thus that so many of us lucked into a friendship we shall cherish as long as we live.