facebooktwittertelegramwhatsapp
copy short urlprintemail
+ A
A -
webmaster
tribune news network
doha
THE Empower Generation Consortium (EGC) at Qatar University (QU) has been declared one of the finalists for the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia Award in the category of ‘The students recruitment campaign of Asia’, said a QU press release on Monday.
The proposal was among hundreds of entries submitted for the year 2020. The other projects competing with the EGC in the finals for the award have been submitted by the Independent University of Bangladesh, National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), National University of Singapore, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) and Tokyo University of Science.
On this occasion, Dr Asmaa Althani, professor of Virology and the founder of EGC stated: “The consortium’s vision is to enhance the national human capacities in different healthcare specialties. The consortium is a model for high impact collaborative projects that exhibit active role of Qatar University in evaluating the market’s occupational demands and developing solutions for capacity shortage. We eventually aim to achieve a national base of human resources in healthcare and life sciences.”
Althani added, “The project saw tremendous increase in the health sciences enrolments at Qatar University, from 9 percent in 2013 to 57 percent in 2019. The most recent data indicate that around 47.4 percent of the College of Health Sciences and 59.7 percent of the QU-Health students have been enrolled in this project during their schooling experience.”
This demonstrates the role of EGC as a powerful platform for attracting students to study health majors, an area that is needed for Qatar and its health sector.
The project was nominated by Dr Abdelbary Elhissi, a professor in Pharmaceutics and the acting director of Research Planning and Development at the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, at Qatar University.
Dr Abdelbary said: “THE Award recognises outstanding academic initiatives and capacity building in higher education. The nominated EGC has shown great potential to compete for the award with its new vision for achieving excellence in higher education. The initiative of Qatar University for recruiting students reflects its commitment towards the society and its leading role in transforming higher education and establishing knowledge-based economy in Qatar”.
“The consortium operates three educational projects: Science Education and Human Health Activities (SEHHA), Qatar Scientists in BioDiversity (QSBD) and Genomics and Precision Medicine (GPM). Each project has competency scheme from 1 to 4. We operate the consortium on the basis of genuine engagement of high school students with faculty and researchers, providing accessible role models and hands on training”, said Rasha Abu-El-Ruz, team member of the EGC.
David Suter, Special Projects manager at THE, said that EGC has been nominated to the list of finalists among hundreds of excellent entries this year.
Currently being sponsored by Qatar Biobank and Qatar Genome, the Empowering Generations was sponsored formerly by Sidra Medicine. It is worth mentioning that the consortium has won several awards in the past including; the ‘Oscar of Education in the Middle-East’, ‘World’s Gold for the Discipline of Life Sciences’ and the World’s Silver for the ‘Best University-Employer Partnership in 2019 at QS- Reimagine Education Conference in London-UK.
copy short url   Copy
29/09/2020
5756