AUSAID’s First Assistant Director General visits USP Campus in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
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 | L-R: USP RMI Campus Director, Dr Irene Taafaki, Australian Ambassador to RMI, H.E Mr Martin Quinn, USP RMI Campus Administrator Ms Yolanda Mackay and AusAID's First Assistant Director General Mr Rob Tranter |
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The University of the South Pacific Campus in Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) played host to a team from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) on Monday, 2 September. The AusAID team was led by First Assistant Director General,Mr Robert Tranter, and accompanied by the Australian Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, H.E. Mr Martin Quinn and other AusAid staff. The AusAID team was welcomed to the RMI campus by Campus Director, Dr Irene Taafaki who acknowledged the team’s visit saying that the USP community in the Marshall Islands was “honoured to have the visit from AusAID and to have the opportunity to share with them how campuses throughout the USP region were translating the goals and targets of the 2013-2018 Strategic Plan into respective Campus Academic Plans”.
The visit by the AusAID team coincided with recent discussions of the activities of the campus and the issue of access and on-line learning, a key priority area in the recently launched USP Strategic Plan. The importance of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT’s) and their impact on student learning in today’s global world are the basis for certain strategic thrusts of the Plan.
Mr Tranter touched on his recent visits to USP’s Laucala campus in June 2013, and emphasized the close relationship between the two organizations and the strong level of support that AusAID provides USP under their current Partnership Agreement. He acknowledged the significance of USP as “a model of regional cooperation in the Pacific” in view of its regional reach and long record of achievement.
USP RMI Campus’s Administrator, Ms Yolanda Mackay accepted a cheque from AusAID, presented by Mr Tranter, for a small grant that would contribute towards a fume cupboard for the campus’s science lab, further enhancing the learning experience for students enrolled in USP’s Foundation programme and improving safety for the increasing number of Science students.
While visiting USP RMI Campus, MrTranter and his team also took the opportunity to spend time with the campus’s weavers, whose objective is to revive and revitalize an almost lost weaving style that produces motifs and designs relating to the natural world and the weaver’s lineage and rank and is integral to Marshallese cultural traditions. The project is a collaboration with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
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