Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University (HBMeU), a leading education institution in the UAE, discussed key strategic alliance proposals with officials of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and St Gallen University during a series of meetings in Austria and  Switzerland.

Dr Mansoor Al Awar, the chancellor of HBMeU, was the guest of honour at the launch event of the Drucker Forum 2013 at Vienna in Austria and later met the representatives of St. Gallen University in Zurich, Switzerland.

He later conducted a presentation about the major advances of HBMeU in promoting e-learning as a tool for social and economic growth in the Arab world.

The visiting delegation members included Dr Raed Awdeh, the assistant chancellor of Knowledge & Technology Development, and Serine Al Salhat, the assistant chancellor of International Co-operation.

The launch event of the Drucker Forum 2013 in Vienna began with an official inauguration by Richard Straub, the president of Peter Drucker Society Europe; senior advisor IBM Global Education Industry; and the director of Corporate Services & EU Affairs at the EFMD.

The HBMeU’s delegation expressed its interest in applying for membership to EFMD, which is recognized globally as an accreditation body of quality in management education with established accreditation services for business schools and business school programmes, corporate universities and technology-enhanced learning programmes.

EFMD currently has over 800 member organizations from academia, business, public service and consultancy in 81 countries. It was also agreed that HBMeU will support and have a presence at the Drucker Forum 2013 in November.              

Dr Al Awar also highlighted HBMeU’s Social Online Learning - Cloud Campus initiative, in the presence of representatives from St. Gallen University who affirmed their commitment to fully support this initiative. Both parties agreed on joining forces and establishing a joint team to receive global academic recognition for the Cloud Campus initiative.

“Establishing strategic alliances with leading academic institutions from around the world is an important step towards building a strong foundation for HBMeU’s ‘International Consortium for Teaching and Learning Centres’ initiative," remarked Dr Al Awar.

"It is our goal to develop world-class e-learning programs that take advantage of global best practices, which will reinforce the culture of quality education and learning that we are cultivating at the university and across the Arab world," he added.-TradeArabia News Service