AKU's 16th Convocation

Government for Reforms in Education Sector _ Prime Minister
Aga Khan Stresses Need to Mitigate ‘Clash of Ignorance’

“The government has convincingly shown that it is committed to upgrading and reforming the education sector, because, among other things, it is critical to Pakistan’s economic and social development.” These words of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, reverberated across the impressive 16th AKU convocation ceremony held on December 6, 2003.

His Highness the Aga Khan, Chancellor of AKU, declaring the 16th AKU Convocation open. L to R (front row): Ambassador Saidullah Khan Dehlavi, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of AKU; Dr. Ishratul Ebad, Governor of Sindh; Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Prime Minister of Pakistan; Sardar Ali Mohammad Khan Mahar, Chief Minister of Sindh; and Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, President of AKU.

Recognising AKU as an important "dialogue partner", the Prime Minister noted the significance of the University's growing international role and its support for Pakistan's burgeoning  opportunities for opening channels of trade and humanitarian support within the region. The Prime Minister added that "Aga Khan University has now carried Pakistan's flag beyond our borders, answering calls for help and assistance from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda." He said the University's teaching sites have been established in East Africa where teachers and educators, doctors and nurses and the people of the region are going to benefit from new health and education programmes that were developed, tested and fine-tuned in Pakistan. "Indeed the establishment of a new Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Karachi, and the offering of high quality general education, will be an important step in filling a critical gap in our higher education programmes," the Prime Minister remarked.

The Chancellor of AKU, His Highness the Aga Khan presided over the ceremony, and the gathering of over 3,000 included the Governor and Chief Minister of Sindh, ministers and secretaries, Chairman and members of AKU's Board of Trustees, Syrian Minister for Education, senior government officials, diplomats, as well as academicians, donors, prominent citizens and the University's faculty, students and their proud parents.

The occasion marked the graduation of 240 doctors, nurses and school teachers. Graduates also included 17 from Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Tajikistan, Kyrgyztan and USA.  Seventy-nine students graduated from the University's MBBS programme and 114 from its Nursing programmes, including the initial batch of Master of Science in Nursing _ the first in Pakistan. A graduate received a Master's degree in Epidemiology and seven others their Master's degree in the joint disciplines of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Five graduates of Master's in Health Policy and Management also received their degrees. Thirty-four graduates from AKU Institute for Educational Development were awarded Master's degree in Education. Abdul Hakeem of the MBBS Class of 2003, received the Best Graduate of the Year award. The University, whose graduates are drawn from all over Pakistan including the rural areas, has so far graduated 3,168 doctors, school teachers, and nurses. 

At the Convocation, the University also honoured two academic luminaries by conferring Honorary Doctor of Letters on Dr. Mohammad Afzal, former Chairman, University Grants Commission and former Federal Minister for Education, for his services in several areas of higher education in Pakistan over the past 40 years, including the establishment of the Department of Administrative Sciences at the University of Punjab, and his role in establishing the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, the National Institute of Public Administration and the Administrative Staff College, Lahore; and Dr. Francis Sutton for his role as chief consultant and principal draftsman for the Harvard Committee Report on AKU (1983) and as secretary-member of the Chancellor's Commission on the Future Evolution of the AKU (1993-95) as well as his dedicated service to the cause of social sector development in the world, especially in Asia and Africa. 

In his address, His Highness the Aga Khan said, “It is only in the last few years that new voices, such as the World Bank's, have noted the world's 'knowledge revolution' in which it is not so much factories, land and machinery that now drive the world economy but the knowledge, skills and resourcefulness of people. All societies, it has become clear, must invest in higher education for their talented men and women or risk being relegated to subordinate, vulnerable positions in the world.” The Aga Khan sketched plans for the University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences that is establishing a residential campus on 600 acres in Karachi. The campus will cater to some 1,400 undergraduates and provide a broad curriculum covering the sciences, economics and information technology, as well as world history, Asian languages, elements of Muslim civilisations, history of South Asian and Persian-speaking cultures. "Muslim universities," said the Aga Khan, "have a unique responsibility: to engender in their societies a new confidence … based on intellectual excellence, but also on a refreshed and enlightened appreciation of the scientific, linguistic, artistic and religious traditions that underpin and give such global value to our own Muslim civilisations _ even though it may be ignored or not understood by parts of the Ummah itself." He recalled that even as heir to one of the greatest civilisations the world has known, the Muslim world "has inherited from history not of its own making, some of the worst and longest conflicts of the last hundred years, those of the Middle East and Kashmir." In the face of "perils, and voids of understanding," the Aga Khan spoke of a duty to tackle new challenges with particular urgency. Insisting that "faculty be challenged as a matter of university policy to expand the boundaries of human knowledge." He said that AKU would "pledge its energies and imagination to advancing effective public policy." "This naturally follows the precepts of Islam that the scientific application of reason, the building of society and the refining of human aspirations and ethics should always reinforce one another." He cited, in particular, AKU's applied research strengths in community health sciences and its productive relations with scientists and federal and provincial policy-makers in fields such as nutrition, educational testing, maternal and child health, immunization strategies and vaccine development and epidemiology.

"Yet another example of our growing emphasis on relevant research is the recent discovery by a group of our genetic researchers of a gene involved in the modulation of high blood pressure," said Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, President of AKU, in his Convocation address. He hoped that the groundbreaking discovery would eventually contribute to designing better treatment for patients suffering from this particular form of hypertension. The discovery may also contribute to forming the basis for the development of genetic tests aimed at assessing an individual's genetic susceptibility to essential hypertension.

Reflecting on the progress made by the University, President Kassim-Lakha said, "Thus, twenty years after its founding, the academic quality, and the human resource capacity developed by AKU in Pakistan have enabled it to move beyond Pakistan to establish programmes on three continents, with 10 teaching sites spread over Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, Syria and the United Kingdom."  The spirit of the Convocation was aptly summed up in the words of valedictorian, Sara Hanif of the MBBS programme, that "the magic of AKU can not be expressed in words, for it is something that touches each student who enters this wonderful world _ be it an aspiring nurse, a teacher, a doctor, an epidemiologist or a health policy manager. Today, it binds 20 years of graduates together, all as part of the AKU family. A world where you are not merely a roll number and what you learn isn't merely ‘work’ for the future… it is your life."

For more information, photos and speeches, please visit: http://www.aku.edu/news/con2003/

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