Voice of Development Group Highlights Arab Identity News Round Up Experiencing US Libraries Mind Over Matter SQU-Ministry of Sports Joint Committee Meets News Update Towards Campus Sustainability Department of Public Relations and Information Sultan Qaboos University Issue 237 View Point In-demand Skills Mohamed Salem Al Ghailani Editorial Supervision Humaid Abdullah Al Adwani Editor in Chief M.K. Santhosh Senior Editor Ahlam Al Wahaibi Design & Layout Rashad Al Wahaibi From the point of view of an academic institution, the main advantage of the partnership with the industry is that it helps to better prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow. The Department of Computer Science in the College of Science recently organized an open day with one of the leading banks in the Sultanate. Broad based partnership between academic institutions and the industry is common. However, the Department of Computer Science sets a new example for other departments in the university by inviting just one institution to be acquainted with the skills and capabilities of its students. This is an example of a much more focussed approach where the chances for optimal results are more. The Department of Computer Science invited the IT team of the bank to view the student posters and watch their research presentations. It is pretty sure this event would result in more graduates of this department to get training and job opportunities in this particular banking institution. Pinpointing the right institution or the right people in an institution is what matters here. Hats off to the Department of Computer Science and its leaders. With regard to IT graduates and professionals, innovations or creativity that is limited to one area along may not be enough to cope with an increasingly competitive global economy. According to many IT professionals, traditional software education is not adequately preparing students for the jobs in the industry. Studies indicate that IT leaders of tomorrow will be pursuing innovations which will come from a fusion of several different disciplines -- advanced business integration and analytics; hardware, software and services integrated into an open computing environment; and increasingly important technologies such as wireless and nanotechnology. & Photography Dept., CET Photography As businesses innovate with new technologies for competitive advantage, companies and universities need to make a greater commitment to fill the skill pipeline to feed these new disciplines. There will be increased demand for high-value, high-paying jobs which require a multi-disciplinary skill set of computer services and line-of-business insight. The responsibility of the academic institutions, and to some extent, that of the industrial organizations is to teach students in-demand skills for an on demand world. Horizon invites contributions from SQU members of staff and faculty. Contributions in the form of articles, news, travelogues, stories of unique and interesting experiences, encounters, etc., are welcome. Contributions may be edited for the sake of clarity and length. Please send your contributions to horizon@squ.edu.om preferably, as MSWord attachments. Authors will be suitably credited. Horizon is published three times a month by the Department of Public Relations and Information, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 50, P.C. 123, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. Phone: +968 24141045 E-mail: horizon@squ.edu.om 20 March 2012 P2 Fax: +968 24413 391 Website: www.squ.edu.om SQU-Ministry of Sports Joint Committee Meets The second meeting of the Joint Committee between Sultan Qaboos University and the Ministry of Sports Affairs was held recently at SQU. The SQU side was led by HE Dr. Ali bin Saud al Bimani, Vice Chancellor of the university, and HE Sheikh Rashad bin Ahmed al Hinai, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Sports Affairs headed the representatives from the ministry. The meeting reviewed the implementation of the recommendations of the first meeting of the committee. It also discussed several topics such as enhancing researches related to sports and physical education, providing training opportunities for SQU students to in the Ministries institutions, and further promoting sports activities in the university in coordination with national sports associations and committees. The committee discussed on organizing joint seminars, sport activities and training camps between SQU and the Ministry. SQU Council Meets SQU Council held its second meeting for the year 2011- 2012 on March 10, under the chair of HE Dr. Rawiyah bint Saud al-Busaidiyah, Minister of Higher Education and Chairperson of the Council. The meeting approved university’s academic calendar for the upcoming three academic years. It also approved minutes of the previous meeting, which was held last November, in addition to minutes of the three extraordinary sessions held consecutively during last November and December. Educational Festival Held The opening ceremony of the 2nd Educational Festival, organized by the College of Education was held recently under the patronage of HE Dr Hamoud bin Khalfan al Harthy, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Education for Education and Curricula. The festival brought together student groups to work together for a common goal. It was aimed at highlighting student’s creativity and innovation skills and to practice educational and teaching skills. The festival lasted for four days and included activities such as educational exhibition, Open Day, poetry night and “University Olympics”. News Update Career Fair Concludes The Career & Training opportunities Fair, organized by the Centre for Career Guidance at SQU, was marked by large turnout of students and graduates seeking job and training opportunities in public and private sector organizations. The three day fair was officially opened at the Grand Hall of the SQU Cultural Centre under the patronage of HE Sheikh Saad bin Mohammed al Mardhouf al Saadi, Minister of Sports Affairs. The Minister said that the career fair is a good opportunity for graduates of SQU and jobseekers to get an idea of the job market requirements in the country. “I hope that the exhibition would pave way for more people to be employed in the private and government organizations in the Sultanate. What is more important is that the jobseekers should explore the kind of expertise and skills that the companies are looking for and focus on learning these capabilities” Al Saadi added. 56 organizations participated in the exhibition this year. These organizations were selected according to specific regulations and certain criteria such as the number of jobs and training opportunities offered by these organizations to SQU graduates, in addition to the quality of jobs that cover most of the SQU academic disciplines. These institutions offered about 760 jobs and 364 training opportunities for SQU graduates. The fair is accompanied by a number of events and lectures about the major courses taught in various colleges of the universities and presentations about selected companies. The majors presented included Industrial Engineering, Geography, Instructional and Learning Technology as well as Early Childhood Education. Students Campaign Against Smoking Translated By: Nasebah Al Muharrami SCOPH, a student group functioning under the Medical Society of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University, is implementing a an anti-smoking campaign with the slogan “With you in order not to smoke” under the supervision Anwar bin Abdullah Al Abri, a student of the college. The project is headed by Aisha bint Issa Al Balushi. The campaign is aimed at educating the youth about the harmful effects of smoking such as health problems and its social aspects including the risks associated with passive smoking. An anti-smoking clinic that offers smokers help to quit the habit of smoking is the highlight of this campaign. The clinic will be supervised by academics and students of the College of Medicine & Health Sciences and the details of the people who seek help will be kept confidential. To attract more smokers to benefit from the campaign, exhibitions will also be held. As part of the campaign, the Group conducted an anti-smoking awareness session in two phases for high schools students in Al Khoudh area which included lectures on the disadvantages of smoking. During the current semester, the group members will conduct extensive anti-smoking campaigns at Musa bin Nassir School, Middle East College of Information Technology, and Al Bahja Center. The event will include exhibitions anti-smoking clinics. 20 March 2012 P3 Insight Towards Campus Sustainability By: Dr. Hameed Sulaiman Department of Biology College of Science Dr. Hameed Sulaiman Sustainable development is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century in almost all sectors of development. Sustainability – as everyone understood is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” has three facets: economic, social and environmental. Environmental sustainability has emerged as a major concern facing large institutions not only due to the sheer use of resources but also due to the responsibility it has towards the community at large. “Greening” the universities emerged as the response by universities to this challenge of environmental responsibility and sustainable development. In the Rio declaration, the integration of sustainable development in university education and research is recognized as an important issue. Universities world-wide have signed agreements such as the Talloires Declaration and the University Charter for Sustainable Development and have taken action to integrate environmental issues into their education, research, outreach and campus management. In 2000, a publication of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future clearly indicates, there are many ways in which universities can be involved in sustainable development, e.g. management, planning, development, education, research, operations, community service, purchasing, transportation, design, new construction, renovation and retrofit. Several universities then have begun the debate about the content of this concept and the ways in which to integrate it into their university policy, organization and activities. Now the question that come to our mind is where does SQU stands in this proactive approach. There is no doubt the campus cleanliness gives anyone a very good impression. Just to give a rough estimate of throughput of environmental resources, the SQU community comprises of over 20,000 staff, students and workers, which consumes above 9 GW of energy, and 100,000 m3 of portable water and 300,000 m3 of irrigation water per month. Not to mention, ever-increasing amounts of paper, materials, hazardous chemicals, etc. On the other hand the university community produces several thousand tons of waste every month. Clearly, problems related to waste produced in the SQU cam- 20 March 2012 P4 pus go beyond their proper collection and disposal. How can we engage? It depends on what we want to achieve. In dealing with this issue, a university may have a particular focus, a programme or even a holistic mission. It is beyond doubt the SQU has programmes on environmental matter arising from its campus. But going beyond that requires planning and need to pursue towards the holistic mission. Where to start with?- There is nothing like available tailored made approach to implement environmental sustainability in campuses of larger magnitude like SQU. There are institutes across the globe who pioneered and set examples how to go about it. But every organization’s impacts and responsibilities are different from one another. Hence they opt to work on initiatives to fit their demanding responsibilities towards the environment and society. But there are general frameworks available agreed upon by organizations of concern to achieve sustainable goals and objectives in the campus. For example, one such comprehensive template which embraces different approaches/ strategies can be found in the four “Cs” Model administered by University of Maryland. This includes intervention and activities on four fronts namely Campus(Operation), Culture(behavior/action), Curriculum(Education and research) and Community (Engagement). In cognizance of these developments already by top management, H.H. Sayyida Dr.Mona bint Fahad Al Said, Assistant Vice Chancellor for External Cooperation, has initiated a preliminary proposal and step up the process of prioritizing the environmental issues in the campus that have to be addressed immediately and move forward towards a holistic mission in phased manner. More specifically, SQU’s plan for campus sustainability would start establishing guidelines for responsible growth, reduce campus energy and resource consumption and foster interdisciplinary research that will significantly impact our campus and the community at large. In doing so, the University will expand its role as an innovative leader in GCC region and beyond in future years to come. Mind Over Matter Experiencing US Libraries Four Librarians from College of Commerce and Economics, SQU, participated actively in the International Visitor Leadership project which was sponsored by The U.S. Department of State (DOS) and administered by Meridian International Center and conducted from January 16 – 24, 2011. The team from SQU consisted of Said Al-Muharbi, Senior Librarian and Head of Circulation Department, Khalsa Mohamed Al Hadhrami from Cataloging Department, Khalifa Al-Busaidi from Circulation Department and Ahmed Al-Sulaimani from referencing department. Basically, the program strives to achieve the following specific objectives for this project: to learn about ways the academic libraries in the U.S. universities and colleges train new students; to examine digital collections and methods of digitizing printed materials; to look at best practices and methods used by libraries in cataloging; and to gain knowledge of training programs for librarians and volunteers. The project addressed the following themes in each city; Washington, District of Columbia with the themes including Introduction to the U.S. federal system, overview of the U.S. library system and The role of federal government in support and funding of libraries. The next city was Minneapolis and the program covered topics such as funding and management of libraries at the academic level, digital collections and methods of digitizing printed materials at the academic level and online cataloging. The last city to visit was Boston, Massachusetts and it focussed on themes such as funding and management of libraries at the local level, acquisition of online cataloging and access to electronic resources for researchers, school libraries and public library programs for students and management of circulation and technologies used. The Visit in Detail A meeting was arranged with a librarian at a campus in the Globe Education Network, particularly at the Minnesota School of Business. The Globe Education Network library serves students, faculty, and staff of the Globe Education Network schools: Globe University, Minnesota School of Business, Broadview University, Minnesota School of Cosmetology, and Institute of Production and Recording. Most of the library resources are online and accessible via the internet. The library network uses online chat (“Ask a Librarian”), text messaging and phone and email. The Minnesota School of Business offers Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s Degrees in numerous specialty fields related to business administration. Visitors examined how the Project for Automated Library Systems (PALS) serves all of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Services are also provided on a contract basis to private college and university libraries, state government libraries, public libraries, school libraries, and special libraries. Their services include: Evergreen: an open source library automation software designed to meet the needs of the very smallest to the very largest libraries and consortia. Through its staff interface, it facilitates the manage- ment, cataloging, and circulation of library materials, and through its online public access interface it helps patrons find those materials. The other one is Aleph: provides academic, research, and national libraries with the efficient, user-friendly tools and workflow support they need to meet the increasing requirements of the industry. Meetings has been arranged with staff at Minitex, a publicly supported network of academic, public, state government, and special libraries working cooperatively to improve library service for their users in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. They support and develop a technology infrastructure and collaboration to facilitate equitable and shared access to library and information resources for all people of Minnesota. The Minitex program is funded by the Minnesota Legislature through the Minnesota Office of Higher Education to serve Minnesota academic and state government libraries. The University of Minnesota Libraries – A Case Study Visitors spent a day at the University of Minnesota with library staff to cover a variety of challenges that libraries face. A discussion with Ms. Judy Wells, Collection Coordinator for Social Sciences and Professional Programs and Librarian for Accounting & Finance, outlined her role in managing business library services at the university. Additional meetings address different themes such as the rapid evolution of digital publishing in the context of continued inflation and constrained budget, a visit to the Georgianna E. Herman Library, a small reference library, created by the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the Carlson School of Management, the enhancement of online information discovery and delivery by providing services that are portable and personalized, the University Digital Conservancy, a venue for faculty to deposit copies of their works for long-term preservation and open access centralized, searchable access to institutional digital resources, University Special Collections care and development and the development and administration of workshops, tutorials, and guides to increase student fluency in information technology. For example, the Library Course Pages are dynamically created for all courses at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus and bring together resources tailored to specific courses. Library Science Education Visitors had the opportunity to spend a morning with faculty at the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at St. Catherine University (St. Kate’s) to learn about best practices in Digital Libraries. The MLIS program educates students in the principles, practices and ethics of library and information science, imbues them with a sense of service to diverse populations and prepares them to be life-long learners and active leaders in a rapidly changing information society. 20 March 2012 P5 News Round Up Voice of Development Group Highlights Arab Identity The fourth gathering of the Voice of Development Group, a student group functioning under the Deanship of Student Affairs, was held recently under the patronage of HE Dr. Ali bin Saud al Bimani, Vice Chancellor of the University. The theme of the gathering was “My identity and my stability”. The activities of the group were aimed at fostering creativity and thinking among the Arab youth and getting rid of life’s dilemmas by instilling and strengthening Arab and Islamic principles among people of different age groups. As part of the gathering, the group members organized an exhibition featuring the Arab Islamic identity through six stalls. The Arab identity was depicted through the evolution of Arabic language and literature. Palestine, the nation which preserves its Arab and Islamic identity despite the military occupation, was projected as the example of a society that keeps its Arab and Islamic identity. The group also put forward the challenges that Arab identity is facing in the modern world where information and communication technologies play a key role. The exhibition suggested models of the curriculum to be adopted in schools that would help preserve the Arab identity. The need to preserve national identity was also highlighted. The message was that preservation of national identity comes as a result of a lot of hard work put in by national cadres. International Conference on Consanguinity Held An International Conference on Consanguinity (ICC 2012) entitled “Towards the Discovery of Genes Predisposing to and Protecting from Disease” was held in Muscat recently. This conference was organized by the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at SQU, in collaboration with the University of Bologna Medical School in Italy. The opening ceremony was held under the patronage of HE Dr. Ali bin Saud al Bimani, the Vice Chancellor of SQU. The Conference focussed on the advancement in research on consanguinity and its impact on healthcare in the Middle East region. Dr. Allal Ouhtit, Head of the Genetics Department in the College of Medicine & Health Sciences and Chairperson of the Conference said that the innovative aspect of this conference was the emerging idea of the positive aspects of consanguinity. Panel sessions were held for three days to allow in-depth discussion of the day’s talks between the audience and the speakers. The program comprised plenary lectures, provided by distinguished leaders in Human Genetics and Genomics, addressing new developments in the field. The meeting provided ample opportunities to establish and strengthen collaborations. 20 March 2012 P6 SSU: A New Way to Support Learning By: Mohammed Abdullah Al Hadhrami The Language Centre at SQU has established a student support unit (SSU) to help students in the Foundation Program to further develop their English skills and to encourage them to be autonomous, or independent, learners. The SSU includes a Tutorial Centre, a Writing Centre, a library and a guidance office. The Writing and Tutorial Centres allow students to voluntarily get the help they need in a one–to –one environment for a half hour session. This guarantees students the freedom to ask any question related to their listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, study skills and speaking (in the Tutorial Centre) and writing in the Writing Centre. All sessions are conducted within a comfortable environment and the centres are staffed by both peer tutors and Language Centre teachers. The rooms in which sessions take place are very well prepared with numerous amounts of materials that vary in degree of difficulty to suit all different levels of students. Currently there are 12 peer tutors working in the Tutorial Centre. The peer tutors are very much appreciated by the students because they relate to their problems as they have been in their shoes but now have more insight, education and experience. The peer tutors are B. Ed or translation major students in their final years of their degree. They are required to formally apply for the post and are given training in order to learn how to tutor and not just teach. For the Writing Centre, students mainly in the more advanced levels are helped with their project and report writing. Often students from other departments use the centre, but this only happens when there is low demand from those in the foundation program. There are about 8 teachers working in the Writing Centre and they too are trained as being a tutor is different to being a classroom teacher. The students have shown great interest in visiting both centres and the demand for booking sessions increases rapidly as the semester proceeds. Both centres are particularly busy before the exams. Last semester over 800 sessions were conducted between the Tutorial and Writing. Centres. In addition to the two centres, there is a small library for LC students. In the LC library, students are free to choose stories: to read them in the library or borrow them and read them at their own time. The Library has more than ‘just books’; it is a hive of activity where students come to play scrabble, attend a writing club, watch a DVD, do a listening activity, complete a weekly grammar practice worksheet or to simply sit and read one of the many daily newspapers or glossy magazines. Both students and teachers have been grateful to these centres for their fruitful efforts in helping the foundation program students achieve more and learn English faster. More than 1420 research projects worth 20 million riyals undertaken since inception; funded through internal grants, joints grants, strategic grants, consultancy services, and external grants. Research findings resulted in publishing hundreds of papers in reputed scientific journals in addition to numerous conference presentations. Research adds to the prestige of the university; the progress continues with more advanced researches. A Sun that never sets Straight Talk Horizon: Why did you select the topic “Blue Ocean Strategy” for your seminar at SQU? Kabaly P. Subramanian Kabaly P. Subrahmanian is a lecturer in the faculty of Business Studies at Arab Open University- Oman Branch. He is a passionate teacher, with teaching and research interests in the domains of Business Strategy, Systems thinking, and Service quality. Before coming to Oman, he has taught and examined MBA programme of the University of Madras. He is an accredited lecturer by University Grants Commission of India. In Oman, Kabaly worked with the Ministry of Manpower, Al Musanna College of Technology, Department of Business Studies. His future interest includes studying the application of Blue Ocean Strategy for developing products and services for the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. As part of this motivation, he delivered a talk on Blue Ocean Strategy at SQU recently. Excerpts from his conversation with Horizon: Kabaly: As individuals or organizations, we strive to achieve high performance, which is sustainable. In today’s context of stiff competition, achieving high performance is increasingly difficult. “Blue Ocean Strategy” (BOS) brings a new perspective into ways of achieving high performance. It suggests that to beat competition, stop trying to beat the competition. It is a new and radical approach to strategic thinking. This concept was introduced by Professors Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries. They argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “Blue Oceans” of uncontested market space ripe for growth. Moreover, this idea is embraced by many corporates and governments across the world. A Partial list includes Samsung, HCL, Singapore and Malaysian governments. Some of the management experts bet on BOS as the next big idea in the field of “Business Strategy”. Horizon: Could you briefly explain the concept of this management strategy which is applicable to all areas of life? Kabaly: To understand this concept, imagine a market universe composed of two sorts of ocean: red oceans and blue oceans. Red oceans represent all the industries in existence today. This is the known market space. Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today. This is the unknown market space. How to get into the unknown market space first, where there is no competition at all, is the challenge. Blue Ocean Strategy provides you with the necessary framework and tools to capture the uncontested market space, where the competition is irrelevant. The corner stone of Blue ocean strategy is “Value Innovation”, which aims at increasing the value to the customer while reducing the cost to the company. This is contrary to the traditional strategic thinking of either providing high value to the customer or reducing the cost to the company, and hence cost to the customer. Blue Ocean Strategy believes in creating demand, in contrast with the traditional strategic thinking of sharing the existing demand. Horizon: Could you explain how this strategy can be adopted in the case of an individual for his personal and professional growth? Kabaly: Blue Ocean Strategy is all about reinventing the way in which we do our business, whether individuals or organizations. Individuals need to constantly evaluate their activities, which they believe leads them to growth. They need to find out whether those activities are the factors which really add value to their profession. Many a times we perform an activity, because our competitor is doing that. Blue Ocean Strategy questions this attitude and suggests reducing or eliminating the non value adding activities and increasing or introducing the value adding or value creating activities. In other words finding out the “leverage points”. To do this, one needs to look beyond the boundaries of their industry. Horizon: How this strategy would help an educational institution like SQU, the primary aims of which is to qualifying national cadres rather than profit making? Kabaly: SQU can use some of the tools like Strategy canvas, value curves, four actions framework recommended by Blue Ocean Strategy practitioners for fine tuning its current offerings by reducing and eliminating the non value adding activities and increasing and introducing value adding activities. This helps the university to release the locked up value and hence serve more customers at the same cost. Blue Ocean Strategy also helps individuals and organizations to look and reach beyond the existing demand, that is, from Present customers to Non-customers. Blue Ocean strategy not only helps to formulate strategy, but also guides in implementing the formulated strategy. One of the important aspects of Blue Ocean Strategy tool set is that, it helps in communicating strategy clearly to the stakeholders. For example, strategy canvas is one such tool, which helps in capturing the strategies of the company and competitors and analyzes the same. Also it helps in developing a new offering and representing it graphically, which is easy to communicate with stakeholders. Red oceans are order of the day. To survive, we need to compete in the red oceans. But, for growth it is imperative to look beyond red oceans, that is Blue Oceans, the uncontested market space.