Prof. Irandoust appoints Deans, Director AIT Extension and Admin. Office Heads
Prof. Said Irandoust, AIT President recently announced the selection and designation of the following persons. Appointments to take effect 01 November 2005:
School Deans
School of Sustainable Development - Professor Sivanappan Kumar
School of Engineering and Technology - Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai
School of Management and Entrepreneurship - Professor I. M. Pandey
Director AIT Extension
Dr. Jonathan Shaw
The appointments of the School Deans and Director AIT Extension will be for a one-year period following which there will be discussions with a focus on performance and achievement before renewal of term.
The School Deans and Director AIT Extension must display strong leadership, excellent communication skills, new vision towards education, research and continuing education activities, place emphasis on brand and further development of the quality of AIT, strengthen relationships with external stakeholders, especially with the private sector, mobilize AIT community members as well as alumni, further develop a culture of collaboration and of AIT as a multidisciplinary institution with greater emphasis on joint teaching and joint research. They must also further develop a culture of openness and mutual respect and initiate systems that can adjust very fast in response to the challenging surroundings. They will need to encourage synergy areas in knowledge fields across schools and units with boundary-less leadership, which is inclusive. The School Deans and Director AIT Extension are all expected to take immediate actions to deal with the current financial situation.
It is important that the School Deans work above their own respective fields of study and take a broad or macro level perspective in the best interests of the School and Institute as a whole. The School Deans will play a key role in overseeing the formation of the new schools including setting up a governance structure and strategic directions and will have full responsibility for the financial situation of their respective schools, their long-term stability, strategic development, promotions aspects, etc. with the required support to be provided by the central administration. The School Deans are also expected to develop a structure based on a strongly autonomous school with clear delegation of responsibility as well as mechanisms to ensure accountability.
In his message to the AIT community, Prof. Irandoust will also introduce the concept of Associate Deans who will be appointed after discussion between the School Deans and himself. He further says, 'AIT supports and encourages the active participation of women in all aspects of the Institute's functions and since we have so many competent women faculty members at AIT I would encourage their participation in such appointments.'
Administrative Office Heads
The process for the selection of the administrative office heads was initiated through an open dialogue session held on 26 August with staff members from the administration. Subsequent meetings chaired by the Vice Presidents were held between the heads of each of the subunits together with some other staff within the subunits following which the names of a few individuals were recommended who could serve as the head of the offices. Since the finance and human resources functions are more specific in nature the above process was not applied in their case and the current heads were asked to continue. The administrative office heads appointed were as follows:
Student Matters - Ms. Ann V. Lopez-Fontanilla
Research and Education Support - Ms. Izel Ann Mojado-Dante
External Relations - Mr. Sanjeev Jayasinghe
Human Resources - Ms. Kalchana Nettayawichit
Finance - Mr. Eng Wan
Infrastructure - Dr. H. L. Tien
The heads of each office would have coordination and administrative responsibility both in terms of finance and personnel of the offices under their respective grouping. The office heads must also play an equally important coordinating and facilitating role in terms of initiatives both within their office and across the other offices in servicing the schools and units.
As stressed at different forums Prof. Irandoust is in favor of boundary-less, team and outcome-oriented organizational structures. The emphasis, he says, 'must be to work for a system with a minimal administration of the highest possible quality, in order to allocate as many as possible of our resources to core activities, namely research, education, and outreach activities.'