Collaboration

On July 8th, the Graduate Academy of Social Sciences and DTU opened the 2016 Summer Course at the Quang Trung campus. Attendees included representatives from the Agence Francaise & Developpement (AFD), the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), the École Française d'Extrême Orient (EFEO), the Université de Nantes, AUF, the Royal University of Phnom Penh, CIRAD, GDN and other participants from the ASEAN community.

  

 

Dr. Vo Thanh Hai, DTU Vice-Provost, said: “It gives us great pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2016 DTU Summer Course. At the time when we first hosted the course in 2015, we found it useful and practical.  In 2016 we remain determined to provide the advanced knowledge, skills, methods and basic theory so that researchers in the Central region and nationwide can improve their capabilities.”

 

Professor Do Hoai Nam, former president of the Vietnam Graduate Academy of Social Sciences, said: “So far the ten summer courses have attracted a large number of participants, which justifies their importance in enhancing the quality of education. We would like to thank DTU for creating the most favorable conditions for these courses to succeed.”

  

 

This year’s topic was “Challenges in the Energy Transition of Vietnam and Southeast Asia”. Representatives from the IRD, the AFD and the AUF discussed the challenges faced in Energy Transition. Mr. Remi Genevey, Director of the French Development Agency, stated that global climate change is having a profound impact on everyone, as the exploitation of natural resources is spiraling out of control. Before natural resources run out, we must take advantage of environmentally safe renewable energy sources. To do so, multiple resources, management and investment must be combined, and people’s awareness of climate change must be raised to accelerate the protection of the environment.

Since 2007, this annual summer course, called JTD, after its French acronym, teaches analytic solutions in the fields of Social Science, Geography, Economics, Statistics, Socio-Anthropology, History and other problems faced by students, teachers, researchers, managers and development specialists of Southeast Asian countries. It was previously held at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and at the Tam Dao resort. In 2016, 80 students from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Madagascar were selected from 350 applicants. Students were divided into four classes to study each of the topics for five days.

Having completed the group work and solved the individual problems with the instructors, the students took part in a Plenary Session to prepare a general report, impact assessment, an exchange of ideas on a common topic and proposed solutions. The course ended on July 16.