UQ Ipswich academic Associate Professor Michael Cuthill has been invited to present a keynote address to the prestigious QS Seminar which is being held on Langkawi Island, Malaysia on April 19-21.
This meeting of 100-150 delegates is exclusively for Asian university presidents, ministers for higher education and director generals of national higher education agencies.
The 2010 forum focuses on regional development, and explores how universities can actively engage in regional, national and community development as part of their intrinsic contribution to society.
Dr Cuthill will speak on the topic, A "civic mission" for the university: history, international trends and institutional responses.
Over the past six months Dr Cuthill has been working with one of Malaysia’s top universities to develop a five-year regional engagement strategy for that institution.
"Regional engagement looks to link the knowledge and resources within the university with the local community to help solve the community’s problems," Dr Cuthill said.
He has written extensively on topics relating to social development and participatory democracy and his experience in these areas has been recognised through recent invitations to speak at the 2008 UN 7th Global Forum on Re-Inventing Democracy in Vienna, and as a keynote presenter at the 2009 International Civic Engagement Conference in Dublin.
Dr Cuthill is Director of the UQ Boilerhouse Community Engagement Centre on the Ipswich Campus of The University of Queensland. Over the past 15 years he has developed and implemented a wide range of large scale, multi-stakeholder projects focusing on finding practical solutions to community issues.
Media Contact: Associate Professor Michael Cuthill, Director UQ Boilerhouse Community Engagement Centre Ipswich Campus, Phone: 3381 1532, Mobile: 0411 590 624, Email: m.cuthill@uq.edu.au
