Michigan’s community service center should be established on campus

By Hassan Al-Momani
Western Herald

The core mission at Western Michigan University is to meet the needs of society and to respond to the requirements of a rapidly changing world. To fulfill this mission, a center for studies, consultations and community service should be established.

The aim of the center should be based on participating in solving real-life problems and contributing to the improvement of productivity in private and public sectors at both national and regional levels.

Additionally, the center should help in directing and investing the technical and human resources of the university to help both public and private sectors in Kalamazoo and Michigan develop their human resources.

Also, it should help in coordinating and consulting technical studies as well as offering consultations to overcome real-life problems facing industrial and service firms, in providing continuing education courses to both the public and private sectors, in upgrading and improving the technical capabilities of the faculty members and other employees and in assisting university students to find jobs that suit their qualifications.

This center should hold general training courses which can be presented in various fields like computer science, management, economics, finance, engineering, etc.

These courses can be a part of an annual training plan or as suggested or requested by concerned parties during the year.

The special training courses should be held to meet identified training needs for certain organizations from public and private sectors.

Also, conferences, workshops and seminars should occur periodically and should be designed to help solve specific problems that various sectors such as business, economy and commerce have.

It should be stated that based on training courses suggested by university faculty members and departments, courses requested by organizations inside and outside of Kalamazoo and courses known from experience to be needed by organizations and individuals, an annual training plan can be distributed locally and abroad.

Additionally, at request from American organizations, studies and consultation can be conducted in cooperation and coordination with academic staff members in the university.

The main office of the center should be located in the campus and it should have two outreach branches, one in Lansing and the other one in Detroit.

The center can manage and execute specialized training courses in different cities or in work places in Michigan or abroad.

The center can conduct its training, studies and consultations activities in all fields of science and technology.

WMU is playing a huge role in serving the community of Kalamazoo and Michigan. However, this entire role should be extended and organized by establishing the center for studies, consultations and community service in order to rank our university as one of the top American universities interested in promoting community service.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=18719

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Aug 8 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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