Patrick and Marlene were asked “What projects would you like to undertake to help sustain or help initiate and develop through your participation in the symposium and through subsequent partnerships between MIT and Haitian academic institutions?”
Here’s their answer:
Patrick Attié and Marlene Sam
We would like to:
- Develop new programs linked to local problems such as:
- Information Technology and Energy Consumption and Management
- Information Technology and Disaster Prevention, Management and Recovery
- Analysis of complex systems and systemic thinking / systems modelization (this is very important)
- Information Technology and e-Government (i.e., IT for public administration)
- Telecommunications
- Information Technology and geophysics
- Learn from the MIT experience in order to help Haitian universities develop a good and sound evaluation and quality-control system that will help them get accreditation in U.S. type environments.
- Help Haitian universities train a critical mass of PhD level candidates in order to improve the quality of the teaching as well as develop some serious research capabilities.
- Identify and implement funding mechanisms to rebuild the destroyed physical infrastructures as well as develop structured research activities.
- Identify 3 to 4 domains in which MIT can support Haitian universities to contribute significantly to reconstruction efforts (urban planning, technology-enhanced teacher training on a national scale, e-governance/decentralizations, reducing the digital divide)
- Design a collaborative strategy to lobby local and international decision makers regarding the importance of higher education for the sustainable development of Haiti.
