Three-day USAID workshop ends on a high note

Islamabad: The USAID-funded Higher Education System Strengthening Activity (HESSA) concluded a three-day workshop designed for Women’s Leadership in Higher Education here on Wednesday. The course ended with presentation of certificates to as many as thirty women faculty drawn from 15 HESSA partner universities and comprising a fine mix of lecturers, assistant professors and department chairs wearing additional hats as administrators, financial experts, and management and academic affairs.

The workshop teed-off with HESSA’s Chief of Party Dr. M. Aslam Chaudhry articulating the key focus areas of the project’s interventions and introducing how women leadership capacity building fits within the project’s inclusiveness framework. He then introduced the international mentors of the training—Dr. Susan Carvalho, Dr. Lisa Pawloski, Dr. Delores Robinson, Dr. Karri Holley, and Dr. Dana Patton from the University of Alabama, and Ms. Cheri Deli from the University of Utah.

The workshop design included panel discussions on the role of women leadership styles and experiences of women from diverse backgrounds. The discourse also helped understand the similarities in women leadership in Pakistani and American HEIs. The panelists included Dr. Susan Carvalho and Dr. Delores Robinson from the University of Alabama, as well as Dr. Bushra Mirza and Dr. Sajida Naureen, Vice Chancellors of Lahore College Women University and Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University, Quetta, respectively. Aisha Sarwari, Director Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability, Coca-Cola, Islamabad, gave a talk on how to project confidence and professionalism in one’s career.

The programme, which is designed to rollout in four phases and includes a two-week visit to the University of Alabama in July, is a transferrable and scalable coaching model that will

serve as the foundation network for future expansion of training for women in higher education leadership in Pakistan.