Athens, Ga.
– The president of Tunisia,
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has bestowed one of his country’s highest honors upon
his fellow citizen and UGA engineering professor Takoi K. Hamrita. The Republic
Medal of Merit in Education and Science recognizes Hamrita’s successful efforts
to help shape the future of higher education in Tunisia through innovative pilot
projects and training programs in distance learning, university management and
evaluation and university public service and outreach.
The national award is a result of one of UGA’s most
successful and productive international partnership programs, the UGA-Tunisia
Educational Partnership. As the project’s founding director, Hamrita leveraged
support from the U.S. Department of State, the Tunisian government, UGA, the Board
of Regents of the University System of Georgia and Tunisian universities to
forge a new model of international educational collaboration. Since 2002, the
partnership has provided for the exchange of more than 100 individuals
including faculty, staff, administrators and students from UGA and several Tunisian
universities, representing dozens of departments and disciplines.
By providing a forum for faculty from multiple disciplines
and universities to collaborate on important national initiatives, the
partnership has established a wide constituency within Tunisia. Inspiring a culture of
active and engaged faculty eager to promote good teaching and affect
institutional change culminated in the creation of a Tunisian e-learning association
by partnership program alumni. For UGA, the project has created a sustainable presence
for university-level collaboration in the Arab-Muslim world, representing crucial
new opportunities for faculty and students.
“The UGA Tunisia Educational Partnership forged by Dr.
Hamrita dovetails precisely with the UGA core missions of teaching, research
and public service and supports UGA’s strategic direction toward competing in a
global economy,” said Arnett C. Mace Jr., senior vice president for academic affairs
and provost at UGA. “The scale and diversity of participants and disciplines Dr.
Hamrita have engaged in this partnership has instilled it with a sense of
innovation that serves UGA and Tunisian universities with remarkable ingenuity
and an eye toward the future”.
Hamrita, 22 years after leaving her native Tunisia to study electrical
engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is realizing in the
partnership the means to achieve personal goals by creating opportunities for
others.
“When you grow up in a developing country, academic
achievement is central to your life and you grow up with aspirations to change
the world,” she says. Where once she was concerned that her field of
engineering would too narrowly define her career, the systems approach Hamrita
uses to guide the partnership has opened new professional arenas as well as
reconnecting her with Tunisia
in a capacity in which she can help mold its future.
The UGA-Tunisia Educational Partnership was established by
grants from the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative and
the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as well as support from the University of Georgia and the Tunisian Ministry of
Higher Education.
For more information on the UGA-Tunisia Education
Partnership and Hamrita’s award, please visit www.tunisia.uga.edu.
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