AWARDS ARE GOOD, BUT INADEQUATE FOR A REAL EXCELLENT ACCOMPLISHMENT

The certificates of the Excellent Teaching Awards

Thanks God that all ISDEV lecturers have won Excellent Teaching Awards for the 2010/11 Academic Session. For each course they were teaching, students gave them a thumb up hence a high mark that became the basis for the Awards. I myself got three Excellent Teaching Awards for three courses I was teaching. So was Dr Fadzila Azni Ahmad and Dr Zahri Hamat, followed by two Awards for Dr Zakaria Bahari and one Award for Dr Mohamad Zaini Abu Bakar for two and one courses they were teaching respectively.

The Awards, presented by Vice-Chancellor Professor Dato' Omar Osman at the School of Social Sciences Workshop on Saturday 15 October 2011 at Batu Feringghi Park Royal Hotel, were definitely well-deserved. All of us at ISDEV were working so hard to ensure the quality of our teaching through an approach we called 'Heart-to-Heart Approach', so as to create a caring and loving teaching-learning atmosphere that is conducive for the production of excellent and well-behaved students. The results are self-explained; so far eight graduate students of ours have won various awards, from at the level of ISDEV to the levels of USM and Malaysia.

While thanking God so much for the accomplishments, I think that it is still not sufficient for a real excellent accomplishment. Although all of us were bestowed with the Excellent Teaching Awards, none of us received an Award for Top 10 KPI Contributors that were also given away at the occasion.

I realised then that we were thus far busying concentrating on teaching and ensuring the high quality of students, but forgetting to somehow working for our own other KPI. Of course it is a sacrifice on our part, but definitely it is much better if all ISDEV lecturers could accomplish both, the high quality of teaching and the high KPI.

Our ISDEV next move therefore is to increase our research, publications and networking, as well as to speed up the completion of study of our graduate students. These are achievable, InshaAllah, as all are already in ISDEV pipelines at the moment. We would be likely to be granted with a nearly RM 1 million grant in the form of Research University Team, publishing articles in various journals and a total of at least 20 books with the cooperation of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), signing MoU with DBP, Walailak University of Thailand, and Universiti Brunei Darussalam and Universiti Sultan Sharif Ali of Brunei Darussalam (as an addition to the existing MoU with two universities in Norway, four universities in Indonesia, and one with IBS Books Sdn Bhd, as well as to continue strengthening the networking with institutions affiliated to ASEAN Muslim Research Organisation Network (AMRON) of which ISDEV is the co-founder institution), and graduating 13 Master students and at least five PhD students in the coming few months.

May Allah SWT guides and helps ISDEV in realising such a plan by easing us at ISDEV in accomplishing them accordingly, InshaAllah.

L-R: Myself, Associate Professor Dr Abdul Fatah Che Hamat and Dr Zahri Hamat at the Social Sciences Workshop

All spouses were allowed to come to the Social Sciences Workshop. With my wife during a dinner at Batu Feringghi