Making of ACAS 10: AHELS

A one year old institution planning a Higher Education Leadership Summit is not the rarest of possibilities, but not a common one. All the more so when that baby-HEI happens to be a self financed Institution. The idea was with me at the very start of the institution, even though it was shared with the institution leadership only after a couple of months hesitation. Institutional leadership can carry a different connotation: an institution that leads other institutions through it practices, processes and procedures. The ACAS vision had this thought of leadership embedded in its DNA, the idea of leading the leaders. AHELS was another serious push towards the realisation of this goal. 

The plan 

Hosting a Summit of the Higher Education Leaders with focus on a theme of current relevance was the early thought. The initial drop of the idea for sure was greeted with raised eyebrows and subtle expressions of incomprehension by the institutional leadership. To be fair, the chemistry between us definitely trained them not to say 'no' but to rather look at each other or at times to wonder inside themselves, 'how on earth are we going to make this happen'! But I always left the sink-in period when a genuinely challenging idea is dropped. There is a hibernation period for the idea to hatch. When it is too long my colleagues might even conclude that he has dropped it and moved on. But eventually I come back, more often than not. 

The senior most faculty member, Ms. Saritha was given the responsibility of leading the efforts of organising the event while the core Dept Heads, Rohith from Commerce and Noufal from Economics too were part of it. Of all the events we have organised at ACAS, the one I have toyed long with a to-do-or-not-to-do mind was AHELS. But the cause of my hesitation to move forward was not the doubts regarding our capability to run the show, but rather concerns regarding how the target group will respond to it. Though we didn't want paper presentation to be a part of the event, later discussions reversed the decision and included one session which will admit only good papers through serious gatekeeping. 

The Implementation 

The implementation part of AHELS, Al Shifa Higher Education Leadership Summit, was the most challenging in one sense as it was the biggest show we were organising, with the most academically relevant target group on mind: the leadership. After getting through the initial stages like formation of committees, fixing of the dates, selection of the focus theme, we got down to more time consuming tasks like preparing the speaker list and the construction of a website exclusively for the event. The request for fund for the same was accepted by the College Management Committee. The date for the event was set in July so that the leadership of the HEIs will not be too busy, even though the admission process for the new academic year could be on. But this goes on for about 5 months in our part of the world, and it is not advisable to wait for the process to end! 

The speaker selection was a hard job as always for a big event. This is more so for a leadership summit as the speakers we need are of the highest order who are either responsible for the decision making at the topmost level or implementation of policy at similar levels, or both. This cream category is hard to connect. Once we connect, they need time (justifiably since they are a quite busy group) to commit themselves to the event. Even if they offer themselves, it is always possible that their schedule might change all of a sudden for reasons beyond them. To sum up, the organisers are always kept on their toes till the invited keynote speaker is on the stage! We lined up and exceptional, ambitious list and started the pursuit. 

As mentioned in earlier posts, occasionally the fact that my team comprised of capable yet inexperienced young faculty members who haven't run activities at this level, posed challenges. But as always, they proved to be quick learners and was ready for the task as the D-day approached. Regular web updation, speaker announcements, call for paper brohure, event brochure, updation of work done by various committees for the actual run of the event, real time webcast, everything was taken care of the team when the days approached. We hosted Vice Chancellors, Registrars and other key members of decision making bodies as key speakers. We ran a panel discussion connecting humanities, HEIs and leadership and hosted a number of leaders from HEIs. It was the most memorable event of the year that we were happy to flash a 'Leading the Leaders' catchline on the video wall at the end of the show!  

The Challenges 

The most difficult part of the Summit was bringing in relevant group of audience for the summit. This was not an unforeseen hurdle. The reasons why this was expected are a couple. One, most of the heads of the HEIs are obviously busy. But this business partly is caused by the micromanagement in these institutions and the resultant lack of effective delegation. It is one of the ways the leadership voluntarily ties themselves inextricably down to one's chair. Second, among those who are in the leadership of the HEIs, only a very small percentage takes genuine efforts to involve constructively in responsible conversations. Though professional development is to be continuous and it applies to the leadership too, not just to the faculty, it is hard to come across such capacity building programmes for the top leadership in HEIs. Those who take genuine interest will surely find a way to make it to such events, irrespective of the 'business', I am sure. We did make serious efforts to connect to such a group of leaders among the HEIs heads, but we didn't really hit the number we targeted. Though the number we had, considering it is the first edition of the event, was rather satisfying. 

The second category of leadership we set our eyes on was the emerging leadership of the HEIs: the Vice Principals, Dept Heads and IQAC coordinators. In certain cases, on special requests based on genuine interest, we have accommodated some who do not fit into any of these categories, but they were worth having around. Again , the number of young leaders who turned up was less than we expected. The reasons included their ability to get away from the institutions where they work, not being genuinely drawn to be a part of the evolving conversations and the lack of 'duty leave' status for the event. The last one makes it interesting as this is a factor which draws the crowd in. It was intentional not to offer the duty leave road to the participants though a collaboration would have enabled us to offer the same. We wanted to see how many would be genuinely interested in walking in and being part of the event, 'sacrificing' a day. 

The Takeaways

Lessons learnt through the organisation of AHELS are many though of a different magnitude. The biggest benefit as I rate it, is the experience of meeting, hosting and interacting with the top leaders of the academia. This is not an opportunity that the young workforce at the institution usually comes across. Such exposures enhance their ability to absorb the pressures which are inherent to such occasions. Equally relevant is the experience the faculty members gather while organising such high magnitude events. We are living in a world where each micro-event is showcased as a macro one, each speaker is labelling herself /himself as an expert. In such a world, it is always worthwhile to be part of a really big event with big names and outcomes. 

The Way Forward 

But to generate real advantage from the Summit, it has to become a regular annual event at ACAS, as Dr. M. V. Narayanan, then Vice Chancellor of Kalady Sree Sankara University stated during interaction with the hosts. In fact, all the key speakers who were part of the AHELS, including Prof. M. V. Narayanan, Prof. Saji Gopinath, Vice Chancellor, Digital University, Kerala, Prof. Satheesh, Registrar, University of Calicut, Dr. Kunhammad, Dean, Kannur University and  Prof. Amruth Kumar, Central University of Kerala, appreciated the efforts to generate leadership conversations on matters of academic relevance for the country. Let the conversation continue and let there be more of the young academic leadership to involve and steer the dialogues in effective direction. The summit should enhance its capability to draw more quality perspectives through papers and presentations too. Productive international collaborations will help the college achieve this. 

Babu. P. K., Ph D.