Income Generation and Cost Saving Lab

Day 3

 On the third day of the workshop (or lab), participants get into four different groups to discuss (i) policy & governance of income generation; (ii) methods and types of income generation; (iii) policy & governance of cost savings and (iv) techniques and classification of cost savings.  Basically the groups deliberated and obtained relevant data to support their recommendation.  After much discussions, the chairman of each respective group had to present their proposals to all participants.  Whilst some proposals are "ready for implementation", others will still need to be further refined.  What is amazing about this type of lab discussion, is the ability of participants to concentrate, focus and deliberate on the subject matters in a very effective manner.  Congratulations to all for work well done.....

Income Generation and Cost Saving lab

Day 2:

On the second day of the workshop, participants were given more data and information by top management of the university.  The Vice Chancellor, Dato' Sri Pro Ir Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar gave his keynote address and vision.  Income generation by public universities is a global trend.  For Universiti Teknologi MARA, that extra income can be used for some very good projects, such as to finance the "Mengubah Destini Anak Bangsa - MDAB".  The workshop focuses not only on income generation, more importantly it also promotes cost savings among members.  In his speech, the VC highlighted the need to target a minimum cost saving of at least 30% by the year 2015.  Cost saving measures include cost monitoring for university expenditures such as emolument (i.e allowances, overtime, claims and part-time salary); overhead & utilities (i.e. electricity, water, telephone, internet and wastages); process-related costs (i.e. printing, theft, beauracracy, waiting time) and resource-related cost (i.e. truance, absenteeism, fraud, idle time, low productivity).

Income Generation & Cost Saving Lab

Day 1: Members of the Senior Management Council (MPK) have been tasked to think of ways to generate more income and to save cost for the university (Universiti Teknologi MARA).  This weekend, members are attending a three-day lab discussion at the University's Training Centre in Kampong Gajah in Perak.  Deans, Campus Rectors, Directors of Centres of Excellence and Heads of Departments, together with the university's top management (i.e. Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellors, Registrar, Treasurer, Assistant Vice Chancellors) will participate in brainstorming sessions to come up with appropriate policies, governance and strategies for income generation and cost saving initiatives.  Prior to the lab discussions, participants have been given pertinent information and data about the university that would be relevant.  Data on emoluments, expenditures on utility, procurement, income generation by strategic business units of the university were presented by the Registrar and the Treasurer.

Strategic Planning Interim Review

Today, heads of research centres and SIGs presented their actual achievements - in terms of research grants, research publications, number of post graduate students (enrolled, supervised and graduated), number of paper presentations, innovations as well as number of linkages. Seven strategic planning initiatives, code-named as "C-Cure" : C-Cure Publication, C-Cure Principal investigators, C-Cure Post Grad, C-Cure Grant, C-Cure Training & Gifts, C-Cure Innovation and C-Cure Collaboration were also presented by respective project managers and further discussed and deliberated by all participants. All in all, the retreat was very fruitful and effective in delivering the intended objectives. By the 10th of August 2011, a total of 37 papers would be submitted by ARI HICoE researchers as part of their year 1 deliverables. Congratulations

Farewell Discussion...

Before he leaves for the USA, we also brought Prof Binshan to meet the vice chancellor today. The two gentlemen had a good discussion on the need to set clear policies on publishing in Scopus and ISI journals. The VC was agreeable in principle to formulate such policies in UiTM very soon. This is more important especially as UiTM aspires to become an RU in the near future...

Meeting with Jo-Ann from SCOPUS

ARI's journal administrators: Dr Lai Ming Ling, Dr Rozainun and Puan Wan Mariati had the opportunity to meet up and discuss with Ms Jo-Ann from SCOPUS with the possibility of registering MAR, APMAJ and JoFRA with the database company. Since the publication of our journals has been timely and consistent, the chances of being registered is also very high. The fact that our journals are also indexed with Ebscohost, Cabell and Ulrich is another plus point. So ARI will be submitting the forms to register our journals very soon. Thanks Ms Khasiah Zakaria from PTAR for arranging the meeting.

Plan for Visiting Researchers at ARI

ARI is in the process of requesting additional grant from UiTM's Bourse Office to accomodate the cost of appointing short-term (three to six months) Visiting Researchers or Visiting Professors at ARI. Therefore ARI is inviting lecturers and post graduate students to propose names of these potential professors. We hope that the appointment of these professors would be able to contribute towards increasing ARI's publications in either ISI Thomson or Scopus. Their contributions would be in the forms of being co-authors, co-researchers, as well as advisors in facilitating ARI in getting international research grants. It would also be great if these candidates can conduct journal writing workshops during their stay here. Kindly give the names to me or to Prof Rashidah asap.

Publication Strategies & Enhancement of Citations

As part of UiTM's aspiration to become a Research University, the RU Focus Group Committee in its recent meeting proposes the following publication strategies: First is for UiTM (or to be part of a consortium)to subscribe to ISI Web of Science (WoS) from Thomson Reuter. This would allow our researchers and authors to be exposed and linked to a wider publication network. WoS would compliment the existing Scopus databases at PTAR. Second is to slect 3-4 UiTM's niche journals (the university now has 57 journals)to be published by international publishers such as Emerald, Inderscience etc. In due process, these journals would be in the right track to be listed with either ISI or Scopus. Steps would then be taken to increase the number of publication of these journals to four issues per year. Third is to "merge" or to realign UiTM's 57 journals to only say ten strategic journals. Efforts then is to improve on the quality of editorial board members to reflect international participation and to increase on the frequency of publication per year. Full time managing editors must be appointed to ensure quality and timeliness of publication. Fourth is for RMI to review its past CSSR proceedings and to convert them into journal articles. Fifth is to organize writing workshops with renowned authors with the possibility of online journal submission to Scopus & ISI thomson. Sixth is for UiTM top management to consider rewarding articles published in ISI-Thomson or Scopus. Seventh is to realign the KPIs of COEs with the KPIs stipulated by MOHE.