For Immediate Release - April 4, 1995
COL APPOINTS NEW PRESIDENT
VANCOUVER - The Chairman of the Board of Governors, Dr. H. Ian Macdonald, has announced the appointment of Dato' Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan as the new President and Chief Executive Officer of The Commonwealth of Learning (COL). Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, COL is an international organisation, which Commonwealth Governments created in 1988 to encourage wider access to quality education and training internationally.
Professor Dhanarajan, who succeeds COL's founding President, Professor James A. Maraj, will assume his duties in Vancouver upon completion of his current term as Director of the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong on July 31, 1995.
Commenting on the appointment, Dr. Macdonald said, "We are delighted that Professor Dhanarajan will add his skills and stature to the important tasks before COL. He has earned world-wide respect as an active advocate of open learning and distance education, especially in Asia, and this influence will gain new importance as he launches his work on behalf of the entire Commonwealth through COL. Under his leadership, we expect COL to maintain and enlarge its active and vigorous role within the international educational community."
During the past fifteen years, Professor Dhanarajan has participated in establishing a number of distance education systems in South and Southeast Asia, and organised a successful network of distance education research in Asia with support from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from 1985 to 1989. He joined the newly established Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong in 1989 as Associate Director (Academic), becoming its Director in 1991. In 1992, the Institute honoured Dr. Dhanarajan by conferring on him the title of Professor. In the same year, the University of Maryland University College (USA) awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. In July 1994, he was conferred with an Order of Chivalry by the State of Penang, Malaysia.
Prof. Dhanarajan is also the current Secretary General of the Asian Association of Open Universities, has been on the Executive Board of the International Council for Distance Education (ICDE), and was educational advisor to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. He is a Malaysian citizen and holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Aston in Birmingham.
Professor James A. Maraj has taken on a new assignment as Executive Director of the Tertiary Education Commission in Mauritius.
The Commonwealth of Learning was created to widen opportunities for learning, by promoting co-operation between Commonwealth educational institutions, with a particular emphasis on utilising the potential of distance education and the application of communication technologies to education. It aims to strengthen the capacities of Commonwealth member countries to advance their economic and social development.
A biographical note on Professor Dhanarajan is available upon request.
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For further information contact:
Dave Wilson,
Public Affairs Officer
The Commonwealth of Learning
1285 West Broadway, Suite 600
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V6H 3X8
Tel: (604) 775 8200
Fax: (604) 775 8210
WWW: www.col.org