AT THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY VISION ON THE OCCASION OF THE WORLD QUALITY WEEK 2021, A PANEL DISCUSSION WAS HELD

Message from the Rector on the occasion of the WORLD QUALITY WEEK 2021

We are pleased to announce that International Vision University, this year joins in the celebration of World Quality Week 2021. This is a positive practice that has existed for many years in order to promote a great progress and celebrate the contributions of a commitment to quality, through sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned. This year’s theme is:

"Sustainability: improving our products, people and planet"(CQI, 2021)

This will enable the university to take a closer and deeper look into this major attractive topic that from the one side is of concern to institutions and organizations globally, and from other side encourages and nurtures the opportunities for improvement of quality to keep getting better in journey towards outstanding performance and excellence in the education activity, with ultimate goal to achieve a Zero-Waste society.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets set from United Nations, in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development seek to realize critical importance and significance of people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. As integrated and indivisible, they balance the three pillars of sustainability: the economic, social and environmental that contribute for equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world.

In this domain, the role of universities is extremely great, and so we have adopted and commit ourselves to working hardly to achieving success, with integrating requirements of SDGs in policies, missions, strategies, and programmes, into the curricula, community partnerships and relationships, as well as facilities university operations, and intercultural dialogue at the national, regional and global levels.

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (UN, SDGs)

Тo achieve Goal 4 we systematically work on system-wide strategic planning in times of Covid -19. We are committed towards:

-          Relevant and effective learning outcomes in inclusive and effective learning environments.

-          Equal access for all, including students with disabilities indigenous peoples and students from vulnerable groups

-          Increase the entrepreneurship

-          Knowledge and skills to promote human rights, peace and non-violence, and global citizenship

-          Systematic mainstreaming in the development of high- quality teachers in educational activity.

We underscore that, all targets will be achieved with follow up and review processes of the progress and through maintain adopted principles and procedure in assurance the quality culture, with longer- term orientation. We are pledged to foster the following principles: student-centered, result-oriented, high-quality approach in teaching and research, taking into account emerging issues and newest social values from the global point of view.

Education for Sustainable Development represents a key mechanism to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, SDGs)

We are convinced that education for sustainable development goals at the University must be a top priority. The quality of the educational process and the results of the scientific research work directly and inevitably affect the quality of realization of all set development goals. The Universities, as never before, are being facing with the great challenges in the conditions of spreading of advanced digital information technology, and global challenges - economic recession, poverty and inequality, climate crisis, climate change water scarcity and water pollution, environmental degradation, as well as aggressive threats such as current pandemic Covid -19 and other disasters. So we, the universities are faced with need for strong leadership in management structures, to include sustainability principles to the processes of the problem-solving, decision-making, recognizing and managing changes with the long-lasting effect in the higher education, in order to promote resilience and risk reduction.

We remain committed to develop the following key competencies and skills between students and academic staff, like systems-thinking competency, anticipatory competency, normative competency, strategic competency, collaboration competency, critical-thinking competency, self-awareness competency, integrated problem-solving, in ordered to achieve cognitive learning objectives, socio-emotional learning objectives and to prepare students and academic staff to pursue sustainable development.

I am confident that our university will remain to the path to ensure and foster knowledge, values, competencies, skills, attitudes and behaviours needed in the 21st century, that our graduated students and academic staff will contribute for development of contemporary ambitious concepts such as Industry 4.0, Quality 4.0, Business Process Reengineering, Circular economy – Remanufacturing, Innovation 5.0 needed to promote, maintain and improvement smart, sustainable and inclusive growth towards sustainable and zero-waste society.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to academic staff, administrative staff, all our students, alumni and friends, who contribute to joint efforts to quality improvement in the education, research and innovation activity, particular in this turbulent and uncertain times.

Аt the end I will end my message with the quote:

“Education can, and must, contribute to a new vision of sustainable global development.” (UNESCO, 2015)