President Margee Ensign has advocated closer collaboration between universities which engage in research and the harvest of data and development institutions which are managing change and dealing with conflicts among nations. Research and data, the President said, are key to decision-making in innovations and social transformation.
President Ensign's remarks centered on institutionalizing research and development synergies and how universities and multilateral institutions can work together to address challenges like poverty, conflict, climate change, and underdevelopment.
The President spoke while receiving the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) officials in her office on Thursday, April 7, 2022.
Citing the successful U.S. Land Grant Universities, which provided a model of research and teaching in agriculture and powered the United States’ food security, establishing linkages between universities and industry, President Ensign stressed the need for an agency that would "take the knowledge from the campus to the community."
As a Development University, the President told the UNDP officials, AUN educates students to assume the role of "extension agents" committed to gaining the vital intellectual and social tools necessary to solve current and future problems.
"Our students are trained to engage the real world, confronting immediate problems, and finding solutions to the intractable ills of poverty and injustice, environmental degradation, violence, and despair," President Ensign said.
President Ensign told the representatives that AUN is well equipped to give UNDP the relevant support and partnership needed to achieve the larger goals of a better society.
Leader of the delegation and Program Manager of the UNDP's Nigerian Jubilee Fellows Program, Mr. Williams Tsuma, commended AUN's interventions in the community. He said the UNDP is pleased to key into the AUN Development Mission and to explore ways of working together to achieve the UNDP's 2030 Strategic Development Goals (SDGs). These include overcoming the critical challenges of data collection and analysis, conflict prevention, and management, electoral reforms and solving local communities' energy challenges in a manner that protects the environment.
"We are rethinking our development model. We will focus on achieving complex understanding of the dynamics that trigger conflicts. That way we can stop them before take-off. We also provide support to post conflict society and offer development assistance."
Mr. Williams said he is impressed with the quality of education offered at AUN and the institution's commitment to a better society.
Reported by Tina Bitrus