Topics in Detail

The community is currently engaging and collaborating on the following thematic tracks:
 Capacity building in universities in developing countries
 Environmental Sustainability
 Digital Dissemination of University Content
 Middle East: Partnership and Challenges
 Issues of Intellectual Property

In each theme, GULF members have created task forces, which report to the broader community once a year. Below is a synthesis of the activities in each area.

Capacity Building
At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009, GULF members and other university leaders signed a common statement on the responsibility of leading universities in capacity building. Synergies were created between the GULF and the African University Leaders Forum at the summit on "The Next Generation of Academics in Africa" in November 2008 in Accra, where a team of GULF members participated. Following up on the Accra meeting, members of the GULF engaged the World Bank and other key players from the public and private sector to explore synergetic opportunities for the GULF in Africa. With the support of the World Bank, a workshop of university leaders from African countries and key representatives of GULF members was held in Johannesburg on March 4-5, 2010 and offered the participants an opportunity to mainstream potential areas of collaboration between the GULF community and the community of African university leaders. The report highlighted Human Capital, Teaching Materials and Harnessing Networks as areas of major challenges and opportunities of collaboration going forward.

Below is a set of examples and best practices of GULF members' different activities on the continent.

Examples and best practices:

Environmental Sustainability
Early in 2008, the GULF agreed to focus on energy issues and on the development of energy efficient campuses, which have benign environmental footprints. A conference, “Sustainable Academic and Corporate Campuses: Time to Implement” will take place in June 2009 at EPFL. Hosted jointly by the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) and the GULF, the conference will bring together different networks of universities and corporations involved in sustainable campus practices, which have made sustainability a priority, to promote the exchange of best practices on sustainability and understanding of different advantages and synergies among the existing networks.

The outcome of the conference is a charter on sustainability practices that was signed by the majority of GULF members at the Annual Meeting 2010.

Digital Enterprises
The involvement of different GULF universities in digital dissemination of content, along with the substantial technological advancements of the last decade, led to the idea to create a searchable database of world-class online educational materials. A meeting in autumn 2009 at Tecnólogico Monterrey brought together key deputies of the GULF members for strategic interlinkages in joint digital dissemination projects.

Middle East: Partnership and Challenges
Part of the Middle East is pursuing advances for scientific research and higher education that involve ambitious partnerships with GULF institutions and others; at the Annual Meeting 2009, the community held a discussion on these initiatives and the new forms of emerging collaboration. At the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, Dead Sea, Jordan, May 2009, the World Economic Forum helped a group of scientists from the region and the diaspora and public and private sector participants develop a long-term strategy for scientific research and higher education in the region.

Issues of Intellectual Property
In November 2009, six American universities and the Association of University Technology Managers issued a statement of principles and strategies regarding the equitable dissemination of medical technologies.  Four GULF institutions (Brown, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale) were involved in the development of the document. A discussion on the topic started at Davos 2010, where other GULF members expressed an interest in endorsing the document. This will be a key topic for GULF in 2010.