By Joshua Jacobs, Development Officer for Technology Initiatives, LASPAU
LASPAU’s portfolio of professional development programs has evolved to meet the increasingly complex needs of institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The leaders of universities, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations require a broad awareness of economic, political, and technological currents in order to produce effective strategic plans for organizational development.
In the second Financial Leadership Program for Higher Education, LASPAU has once again joined forces with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Escuela de Graduados en Educación of the Universidad Virtual del Tec de Monterrey (the Tec) in Mexico in order to address the need for strategic capabilities among financial leaders.
The Financial Leadership Program, which will include online sessions and a residential phase at Harvard University, is innovative both in its strategic approach to financial challenges within the education sector and in its use of multiple methods of teaching and learning. Participants will examine successful financial strategies and practices from around the region, build a repertoire of analysis and decision-making skills, and put newly gained perspectives into practice through projects developed with their individual institutions’ needs in mind. They will have access to leading professors from both the Tec and Harvard throughout the program.
The seminar is presented largely through distance learning in order to make it manageable for the finance directors, vice-rectors, and other university leaders who enroll in the four-month program. After an introductory satellite teleconference hosted by the Tec, participants will work online, with four-week modules in each of the following core subjects: strategic planning, fundraising, financial administration, and management information systems. The four modules will be led by Professor Melchor Torres, who has overseen organizational change efforts at the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, and a team of Tec professors. The modules will be organized around readings, short assignments to develop critical responses, and interactions via email. They will also feature live Internet-based chat sessions with the Harvard professors and finance officers who will lead the residential component of the seminar.
The culminating experience of the program will be the intensive two-day residential session held on the Harvard University campus. Professor James Honan of the Harvard Graduate School of Education will chair a program of lectures, group discussions, and project analyses. The residential session will offer a range of topics to which the core competencies addressed in the seminar can be applied and will allow participants to cement the peer networks built during the online component. At the conclusion of the seminar, participants will receive certificates signed by representatives of the sponsoring institutions.
The exchange of ideas and experiences provided by the seminar typifies LASPAU’s efforts to encourage connections between the highest-quality educational resources and the institutions and people of Latin America and the Caribbean. The enrichment provided to participants by the combined forces of the Harvard and Tec teaching faculties is evident. However, the combined experiences, skills, and perspectives of the gathered leaders also present a unique opportunity for enrichment of the Tec and Harvard communities. Professor Honan and his doctoral students plan to integrate the projects and experiences of the participants into dissertation research and case study materials. By developing such high-level materials with regionally specific examples, these leading universities can, in turn, more directly address the needs of individuals and institutions from the region.
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If you are interested in further information about this or any of LASPAU's other seminars, workshops, or related services, please contact Angelica Natera, LASPAU's development and program specialist at angelica_natera@harvard.edu or 617- 495 -0488.
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