Date
15-Sep-2017 to 15-Sep-2017 |
Location
Glasgow, UK |
Format
International |
Dr Rajesh Tandon, Founder-President of PRIA, and UNESCO Chair on Community-based Research & Social Responsibility in Higher Education, will be speaking on ‘Roles & Contributions of Higher Education in Realizing SDGs’ at the University of Glasgow on 15 September 2017 from 1300-1400 in the Conference Room, Urban Big Data Centre, 7 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ.
The United Nations system universally adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 as beacons for socially, economically and ecologically sustainable development. This Agenda 2030 establishes 17 Goals which are universally applicable for all countries of the world. Within these globally agreed universally applicable SDGs, each country (and many provinces) have developed (or are in the process of developing) specific nationally and locally relevant benchmarks and indicators for achieving these commitments. While the SDGs are broadly acceptable to all countries and peoples, and have been developed through an extensive consultative process to enable wider ownership, achievement of this ambitious agenda by 2030 faces several capacity deficits. Professor Tandon will discuss these deficits including those concerned with political leadership, financial resources and human capital, and in this context consider the potential community-engaged role of higher education institutions. Within discussion the role of Big Data in this context will be considered.
As part of his engagements with the world of academia and the development sector, Dr Tandon has been championing the cause of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the role of HEIs in helping achieve the SDG goals & targets. He has consistently argued that ‘knowledge deficit is the most critical deficit confronting achievement of SDGs, and higher education and its myriad institutions can address this knowledge, learning and collaboration deficit in achievement of SDGs’. Dr Tandon has also written elaborately about higher education for public good, and its social responsibility functions. In the context of SDGs, he advocates tweaking the HEI missions of teaching, research & service to make it more ‘engaged’, and thus aligned to the various SDG targets. As he puts it, ‘much can be done, and much more needs to be done, in making higher education contribute to realisation of SDGs over the next 15 years, and for this to happen, ‘HEIs, universities, colleges and related stake-holders must ‘make the commitment’ now towards SDGs’.
