Third Mission of Higher Education and Research

I am here at University of Dakar, Senegal, to attend and speak at an International Seminar on “The Third Mission of Higher Education and Research”.  The “Third Mission” is essentially Francophone terminology for Social Responsibility.   It is attended by approximately 100 persons from Francophone Europe, Africa and Canada, plus a few from USA, Asia and Latin America.  There are less than 10 of us who could not speak French.  

This is the second such seminar held, following on the first one st Strasbourg, France, in 2017.  The organisers seem to be mainly coming from University of Strasbourg and an organisation ALLISS - and, of course, University of Dakar.  This time they hope to have attendees sign a kind of declaration on this third mission, and put out a “White Paper” on how this is to be achieved.  Judging on the number of severity of questions raised, it is unlikely that it will happen at this seminar.   

I am impressed by how many heads, or senior management, of African universities are here.  And they seem to be quite passionate about community service, and making research relevant to societal needs such as agriculture, development and the environment.  There is, however, little of the academic, credit-bearing, service-learning that we practice at out university. 

Perhaps because of this, my short presentation on our service-learning program was quite well-received.  Many people came up to me afterwards to tell me so and ask questions.  There are a few leads which may turn out to be significant.  

From this perspective the decision to attend and speak at this seminar was correct.