10th GCHERA Conference 2019: Leadership of Agricultural and Life Science Universities for a Sustainable World

Conference Focus

The Conference will support the leaders of agricultural and life science universities to develop their university’s strategic engagement in education, research, innovation and outreach to address the global challenges for sustainable development.  The Conference will take the opportunity of a global meeting of university leaders to compare and contrast our understanding of the challenges, and evaluate approaches and developments from across the globe. See the conference website at https://gchera2019.usamv.ro/ and Register!

Session Themes

Meeting the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals by society as a whole and in the bioeconomy sectors in particular

KEYNOTES:

The Sustainable Development Goals and Learning for Transformation.
Arjen Wals, Wageningen University and Research (WUR), The Netherlands  

Keynote 2 TBC

Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security – research for impact. 
Bruce Campbell, International Center for Tropical Agriculture CGIAR (CIAT), Denmark  

Feminist perspectives on extractivism in bioeconomies.
Charmaine Pereira   Independent scholar, based in Abuja, Nigeria 

Keynote 5 TBC

Attracting and engaging youth and life long learners in the education programmes meeting the needs for a workforce that can provide sustainable solutions for the future

KEYNOTES:

Refocusing higher education programmes to provide the leaders who will change the world.
Jose Zaglul, Earth University, Costa Rica

Transformational learning and student leadership development in Africa and the NENA. Region.
Iman Kaffas, Senior Adviser, Capacity Development and Organizational Transformation, Global Forum for Agriculture Research (GFAR) and Association of Arab Universities (AArU) 

Contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals: impact through outreach/extension, innovation and incubation, public-private partnerships and engagement with policy makers

KEYNOTES:

Impacting food and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa: training next generation of plant breeders for a hungry, growing and changing world.
Eric Danquah, University of Ghana, Ghana

IBP University: inspiring innovation towards agro-maritime 4.0
Arif Satria. Rector of IBP University, Indonesia.

Providing leadership for a sustainable world through partnership (SDG 17)

KEYNOTES:

Sustainable Partnerships in Asia: Students’, Universities’ and Employers’ Perspectives
Petra Chaloupková. Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic 

From good will to practise: the challenge of building multi-regional joint degrees in partnership.
Poon Kasemsap¹, Nuttakan Nitayapat¹, Didier Pillot²  and Maria Cristeta N. Cuaresma³. Kasetsart University, Thailand¹, Montpellier SupAgro, France² and Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture SEARCA³, Philippines

Expected outcomes

The Conference will provide outcomes for action oriented leadership for change management in the leadership of agricultural and life science universities to address the challenges encompassed by the Sustainable Development Goals.  The delegates will be challenged to review the aims of existing international partnerships and to develop new partnerships in support of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Target Audience

The Conference seeks to attract those who are responsible for strategic decision making in Universities /Faculties of Agricultural and Life Sciences.  The GCHERA Conference Executive Committee invites Rectors, Vice Rectors and Deans, and persons of equivalent status in their university, college, school or faculty being responsible for education, research and innovation to participate in the 10th GCHERA Conference 2018. 

The discussion at the Conference will be advanced through engagement with the agricultural and life science university’s stakeholders; current students through the international student associations (IAAS and IFSA), early career graduates through alumni associations and YPARD, , industry, government, NGOs and donors.

Call for invited contributions

You are invited to submit an Abstract for a presentation under one of the themes 2, 3 and 4.  Under each theme in paragraph B above a number of suggestions are made of topics which could be addressed under that theme.  However, the topics listed are not prescriptive and other approaches to addressing the theme are invited.  You should submit your abstract to gchera2019@usamv.ro  by 10 February 2019.

See the conference website at https://gchera2019.usamv.ro/ and Register for the conference