According to the delegation from the World Bank Institute (WBI), Mr. Kabir Ahmed, Chief Administrative Officer (Finance, Partnership, Scholarships) and Mr. Kamel Braham, Scholarships Administrator who visited AIT on March 9, AIT is one of top 50 plus universities worldwide which the Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program (JJ/WBGSP) has selected as its ‘cooperative universities’ where it will sponsor scholars to pursue graduate studies. Apart from its partner universities in Japan and Korea, AIT is the only institution in Asia selected by the JJ/WBGSP. Please visit the following webpage for more information:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/WBI/EXTWBISFP/EXTJJWBGSP/0,,contentMDK:21111904~pagePK:64168445~piPK:64168309~theSitePK:551644,00.html
Earlier, the Regular Program of the JJ/WBGSP offered wide flexibility in the choice of field of study and institutions, but starting from 2007, it has decided to pose a restriction to provide more focus to the program by limiting the number of institutions and programs that their scholars can attend graduate programs. The JJ/WBGSP is a very prestigious and highly competitive scholarship program managed by the WBI. For its Regular Program, each year it receives around 4,000 applications from qualified mid-career professionals around the world and it can award the scholarships to only 100-150 successful scholars. Currently, AIT has 3 master’s JJ/WBGSP scholars enrolled.
During their visit, the WBI delegation met with Prof. Peter Haddawy, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Nitin Afzulpurka, Associate Dean, SET, Dr. S. Ranamukhaarachchi, ASE Coordinator, Dr. Esa Kalevi Lehtinen, P&PT, Mr. Benjamin Gargabite, Admissions and Scholarships Coordinator, and Ms. Kanya Worawichawong, Corporate Relations Coordinator. Discussions were made on the anticipated new framework of the JJ/WBGSP regular program and possibility of formalizing its collaboration with AIT under the new framework, the possibility of AIT hosting Ph.D. or sandwich-type scholars, as well as the possibility of collaborating with AIT on the higher education development program for Indonesia to be funded by the Japanese Government.
The delegation provided information on their Scaling-up Program, which has the aim to better leverage development knowledge and to foster a network of development practitioners including the JJ/WBGSP scholars and alumni. They also met with the JJ/WBGSP scholars currently enrolled at AIT and discussed their study and life at AIT. The scholars reflected on the uniqueness of AIT in terms of multicultural environmental and practical knowledge obtained. The delegation
expressed satisfaction with the scholars and alumni of AIT.