Winding the threads together (Sir John Daniel)

Winding the threads together (Sir John Daniel)

Sir John Daniel, President and Chief Executive Officer

I confess that I have neglected the COL Blog disgracefully for months because of the pressures of directing our COL-UNESCO project Fostering Governmental Support for Open Educational Resources Internationally. I am sorry for that but will try to atone for it by sharing some reflections on my last day as President of COL, which is also my last day in continuous full-time employment that has lasted for 43 years since I joined the faculty of Ecole Polytechnique, Université de Montréal, on June 1, 1969.

Thanks to an invitation from Alan Davis, President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) I gave an address on Education for Democracy to a joint session of CSSHE and the Canadian learned societies for the study of education and adult education in Waterloo earlier this week. The combination of the topic and the audience allowed me to make it a valedictory lecture in which I reflected on four decades of work.

Ever since an internship at the infant UK Open University (UKOU) in 1972 (part of an MA in Educational Technology at Sir George Williams – Concordia that took me 25 years to complete!) I have devoted my career to opening up and education and making it better. Soon after that life-changing internship I joined Québec's Télé-université and progressed through Athabasca, Concordia, Laurentian and the UKOU before moving to UNESCO in 2001 and COL in 2004. This has given me the unusual privilege of opportunities to expand and improve education at all levels.

My university appointments focused on promoting distance education and part-time studies, whereas at UNESCO I was charged with coordinating the global campaign for Universal Primary Education (UPE). Finally, at COL I have tried to help address the challenge of the fast-rising demand for secondary schooling created by the considerable success of the efforts at achieving UPE. Small though it is, I am proud that COL is now leading the international promotion of open schooling. This is an essential element of the response to the secondary surge if it is not become a tsunami of uneducated, unemployed and disaffected young people that could destroy the societies in its path. I reflect on our efforts at expansion and improvement at all three levels in the Education for Democracy speech.

My eight years at COL have been a wonderful conclusion to my full-time employment because the work has woven together perfectly the three strands of my career: distance learning; institutional leadership and international development. In all my previous jobs one of these three strands predominated but here at COL I have been able to be active in all of them in a well-balanced way. I have also had the privilege of working with a truly excellent set of colleagues. Our international Education Specialists travel the world from Vancouver and New Delhi doing work that requires tremendous skill, blending as it does high-level policy with grassroots interventions. Meanwhile our dedicated local staff keep the home fires burning by providing outstanding support and back-up to our work in the field.

The progress that COL has made in recent years has been the result of a great collective effort but I must single out the contribution of Vice-President Dr. Asha Kanwar, who has conceived and implemented initiatives to give COL a much stronger country focus. Because our work is now much better mapped on to the priorities of each Commonwealth country, many more of them are now supporting COL with voluntary contributions.

I am therefore delighted that Asha, who was appointed President of COL after a global search, will take over the reins tomorrow. COL will go from strength to strength under her leadership and I offer my very best wishes to her and to all my colleagues.

Created: 2012-05-31 14:21