Wednesday, 26 October 2016
Simon Chu (Director, International)
Prime Minister John Key has announced from Delhi an important MOU between the University of Otago and a prestigious educational institute in Bombay to foster a new and exciting teaching collaboration between the two organisations.
Simon Chu, Otago's Director International, says the newly-signed MOU is an opportunity for Otago and BSE Institute Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bombay Stock Exchange, to teach business-related postgraduate programmes together, encouraging student mobility between India and New Zealand and fostering stronger links for future research between the two academic communities.
“Initially, the collaboration will focus on postgraduate programmes at Otago's School of Business, including several taught master's programmes and the MBA,” he says.
Mr Chu says that the first students may arrive at Otago as early as next year, to enter one of the Business School's taught master's programmes in Accountancy and the MBA.
Otago has an active Indian Students' Association and several prominent alumni, including Femina Miss India Supranational 2015 Aafreen Vaz (BSc Physiology major and current medical student at A J Institute of Medical Science, Mangaluru). The University also has the highest percentage of Indian PhD students among New Zealand universities, with 72 students studying in a range of Business, Science, and Health Science disciplines.
University of Otago Vice-Chancellor Professor Harlene Hayne believes this new relationship between BSE Institute and Otago promises to be a fruitful and highly important one.
“This MOU will set the stage for BSE Institute students to transition to Otago in accounting and other related postgraduate programmes. There will be exchange and recruitment opportunities, as well as benefits from the relationships that develop between staff, students and, over time, alumni. These relationships may also lead to research collaborations and funding opportunities, and can only add to the very fine reputations of both institutions,” she says.
CEO of the BSE Institute Ltd, Mr Ambarish Datta, MD, who has co-signed the MOU with Professor Hayne, says students from New Zealand will also get the opportunity to visit India and learn about the Indian financial markets via The India Immersion Program. This focuses on the Indian economy and culture.
Mr Datta says New Zealand's education is world-class, student centric, and focused on supporting students to problem-solve, process information, work with others, create and innovate.
“Education in New Zealand has undergone a transformation in the past two decades, including the areas of governance, curriculum, assessment, qualifications, and teaching and learning. As a result, a range of new ideas and methods have been adopted, based on evidence and research.
“The University of Otago is one of the key universities leading this continuous change. This aligns very well with our own ethos of continuous change and evolution to address the dynamic needs of the corporate world that our students enter. Hence we are very confident that this collaboration will result in creating truly global professionals with the skills and competencies to address the rapidly changing corporate environment,” says Mr Datta.
The MOU specifically includes:
- collaborative research and publication
- visits between institutions by academic staff and research students
- provision of briefing services by each institution for visitors from the other institution
- sharing of data and academic materials
- confidential sharing of research data
- other forms of co-operation that the two institutions may jointly arrange
For further information, contact:
Simon Chu
Director International Office
University of Otago
03 479 7623
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