National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences

March 2015 Newsletter Vol: 6 Issue: 7 FAST-NU inks accord with ACCA

Pakistan, Raymond Jack, Executive Director Following the signing of an Finance and Operations, MoU with FAST-NU, ACCA has ACCA, heads of accredited the BS (A&F) pro- departments and faculty gram and has awarded exemp- members from FAST School of Management tions from seven ACCA papers were also present in the to BS Accounting & Finance ceremony. students graduating from the According to this Lahore Campus. collaboration, ACCA will organize career ACCA conducted a robust quality guidance seminars for assurance process and extended FAST-NU and the Association of Chartered the students of FAST-NU. Among other this award on the basis of compa- Certified Accountants (ACCA) have entered areas of cooperation, the MoU will benefit rable curriculum. The ACCA pa- into an alliance to provide opportunities the university through ACCA’s research pers exempted for the graduates to graduating students of BS Accounting & and insights, scholarships, career advisory Finance to pursue for globally recognized services, and networking forums. BS (A&F) of the accounting and finance pro- professional education – ACCA. The graduates will be able to avail exemptions gram are F1 - Accountant in Busi- memorandum of understanding (MoU) was and add ACCA as a specialized qualification ness, F2 - Management Account- signed at the Lahore Campus on February along with their bachelor’s degree. ing, F3-Financial Accounting, F4 23, 2015. The MoU was signed by Stephen The Director and Head, FAST School of - Corporate and Business Law, F5 - Heathcote, Executive Director Markets, Management, Lahore campus, expressed their Performance Management, F7 ACCA, and Dr. Anjum Ali, Acting Director, special gratitude to the top management of FAST-NU, Lahore campus. FAST-NU, especially the Rector, Dr. Amir - Financial Reporting, and F9 - Stuart Dunlop, Regional Director MENASA, Muhammed for patronizing the effort to Financial Management. ACCA, Sajjeed Aslam, Head of ACCA sign this MoU.

QEC takes part in INQAAHE board member elections

other candidates were from quality assurance organizations in including Higher agencies, regulatory bodies, and accreditation Education Commission, , councils. The board member election was NUST, IBA, Indus University, and Institute won by other contestants by crossing the of Management Sciences. benchmark of 50 votes. All these universities supported the The Quality Enhancement Cell of FAST- FAST-NU QEC has made its place in the candidature of FAST-NU QEC in the election NU contested the International Quality global community through this active by voting for the Board Membership. Assurance Agencies in Higher Education participation by scoring 29 institutional Scoring 29 votes by FAST-NU QEC in (INQAAHE) Board Member election for the votes. The score is one of the highest scores Asian continent is a sign of great confidence year 2015. achieved by any Pakistani university in the by higher education community in the FAST-NU QEC was the only candidate INQAAHE elections. university’s efforts for the cause of bringing representing universities in the election. There are 16 INQAAHE member educational academic excellence. Workshop on android application development NUCES Circuits Society (NCS) at attended the workshop. Lahore organized APP-DEV 101, a The key objective of this workshop was workshop on MIT Android Application to provide a learning platform to the Development IDE, on January 30 – 31, students having no formal background 2015. Ms. Maria Nasir, faculty member in computer science or programming, of Electrical Engineering, FAST-NU, where they can quickly learn to develop Lahore, and Ms. Arooj Mubasher were a simple Android application. The the instructors of the workshop. Seventy workshop enabled all the participants, students attended the workshop. Mr. including 8 years old Huzair, to Muhammad Huzair Awan, the world’s develop fully functional smart phone youngest Microsoft IT specialist, also applications by the end of the session.

Twin cities Testers meet-up held The “Testers” meet up is an industry course offered at campus to the collaboration and linkage initiative in the participants who highly appreciated the domain of Software Quality Assurance practical perspective of the course and its (SQA) that brings wide range of industry relevance to industry. professionals and academicians together The first presentation was delivered by Amir to discuss and explore the state of the art Shahzad who is Manager QA at Zigron software testing in Pakistan. along with his colleague Rabia Saleem. Amir The session was opened by Dr. Zohaib Iqbal, talked about Test automation and why it is Assistant Professor and Lead Scientist at important and how to get started on this Quest Lab, FAST-NU, who welcomed all journey. Rabia explained the selenium based The Twin Cities Testers Meet-up (TCTM) the participants and presented the efforts framework that they have developed to solve was held on February 17, 2015 at FAST- and achievement in the field of research in their problems. NU Islamabad campus. The event was software testing by QUEST Lab at FAST-NU. Later young penetration tester Haider organized by Quest Lab in collaboration He highlighted the need of collaboration Mahmood, who has earned recognition with Knowledge Testers, a leading group of between local industry and academia and from Microsoft and facebook for finding SQA professionals in Pakistan. The meet-up proposed a potential collaboration model security holes in their systems, explained was attended by more than 70 professionals that could be useful for both industry what penetration testing was and how it representing over 35 companies along with and academia. Dr. Zohaib also presented worked. The final talk was by Majid Uddin, presence from the academia. the course outline of Software Testing Manager QA at Bentley Systems. Achievement ICE-NUCES Student Chapter of Lahore campus is officially updated on the website of Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), a charity in the United Kingdom striving to promote and progress civil engineering in the world. According to the link on ICE – http://www.ice.org.uk/nearyou/ Asia-Pacific/Pakistan/Student-Chapter-NUCES – the student chapter of NUCES believes in continuous progression of civil engineering students both technically and professionally. It also said that ICE student chapter will further enhance and broaden the knowledge and perspective of students at FAST- NU by giving them international civil engineering exposure. It’s indeed a matter of pride for FAST-NU, its faculty and students that NUCES Student Chapter name is listed along world’s best universities in ICE Chapters.

2 8th event management workshop held The Islamabad campus of FAST-NU successfully organized “8th Event Management workshop” from February 21 to 22. Mr. Sarfraz Ali Kiyani facilitated the workshop. The aim of the workshop was to equip participants on the new trends in event management. The participants spent first day of the workshop in organizing a corporate event at Ibex Adventure club, Islamabad, and got hands-on training. The participants also learnt the skills of event planning, time management, stress handling, budgeting, event marketing, and pre and post event operations. Students from FAST-NU, NUST, and IMS Peshwar participated in the workshop, in addition to corporate staff from Nando’s Restaurant, NADRA and Mobilink.

QEC conducts workshop on quality management for universities FAST-NU QEC conducted a Higher Education Commission (HEC) sponsored workshop on quality management for Directors of QECs of public sector universities on January 16, 2015 in Islamabad. The workshop was attended by QEC heads from public sector universities that included International Islamic University, Sukkur IBA, Khyber Medical University, and Bahria University. The workshop quality was highly appreciated by the participant universities and the HEC. Some of the well reputed public sector universities expressed their keen interest in extending collaborations with FAST-NU QEC for sharing best practices in uplifting quality standards of education.

Research in Higher Education Top firms donate ‘too little’ to higher education – UNESCO The Fortune Global 500 companies spend was used to fund higher education activities, educated and skilled workforce is critical to less than 5% of their combined budget for such as research grants, scholarships, commercial success. corporate social responsibility activities equipment and higher education “Our main agenda in launching this report on higher education, according to a study infrastructure. is to encourage big companies to invest in by the Varkey Foundation and the United human resources, in order to build more Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural UNESCO urges greater investment equitable and prosperous societies,” said Organization or UNESCO. Even so, the contribution that big business Bokova. The report, Business Backs Education, which However, the tertiary education sector is the is the world’s first comprehensive study into is making towards education is too small most popular area of education spending global corporate expenditure on education, and UNESCO is urging these firms to among the Fortune Global 500, as it is taking found less than half of the Fortune Global commit 20% of their global corporate social 33% of the entire budget for education- 500 spend on higher education. responsibility expenditure to education by In 2013, those firms spent US$2.6 billion on 2020. related corporate social responsibility education-related activities, which was 13% According to the UNESCO director-general, activities. But Bokova points out that of their total social responsibility budget Irina Bokova, the current level of corporate there is a need for those companies to re- of US$19.9 million. Of this amount, only donations to education is a reflection of examine how much they currently commit US$858 million, representing a mere 4.3 %, failure by business to acknowledge that an to improving education around the world.

3 Participation in 2nd NBEAC Deans and Directors Conference 2015 Dr. Sadia Nadeem participated in the 2nd in the structure, processes and people. She to share practical best practices to improve NBEAC Deans and Directors Conference stressed that more academics needed to step linkages and initiate systematic changes, e.g. 2015 on behalf of FAST-NU. She also out of their office and develop long term refinement in the annual appraisal systems chaired a session on Academia and relationships of trust for genuine linkage to reflect faculty efforts towards linkages, Corporate Linkages in the conference. and understanding as only sending students and trainings and mentoring of faculty on The 2nd NBEAC Deans and Directors to the organizations was not enough to this front. She also suggested that Higher Conference with the theme: “Building ensure cooperation and linkages between Education Commission should play its part Bridges, Fostering Collaborations in the two diverse sectors. She urged the heads in embedding systematic changes. Business Education”, was organized by NBEAC in on February 10 – 11, 2015. The conference was a venue for experience sharing, based on the discussions and perspectives of business schools heads, industry professionals and entrepreneurs. Overall, deans, directors and heads from 105 business schools from across the country participated in the conference. In her address as the chair of the session on Academia and Corporate Linkages, Dr. Sadia emphasized the need to improve linkages with the corporate sector, industry, not-for-profit organizations and SMEs. She highlighted the need to supplement ad-hoc and individual efforts by systematic changes “Rang Laye Ga Lahu” Campaign Technical review of The students of FAST-NU Islamabad our campaign! Let us all avail the campus are organizing a special opportunity to acknowledge and Quality World Magazine campaign tiltled ‘Rang Laye Ga appreciate the efforts of the Pakistan FAST-NU QEC has Lahu’ to pay tribute to the Armed Army! contributed as a Forces of Pakistan who technical reviewer were rendering sacrifices in the January 2015 for the motherland. In issue of prestigious this campaign, students, “Quality World Magazine”. Quality World Magazine teachers and staff members is a monthly membership publication of Chartered at FAST-NU Islamabad are Quality Institute, UK, with the circulation of more invited and encouraged than 34,000 per month. Other organizations who to write motivational participated as reviewer include Network Rail, Horizon letters to our brave Armed Discovery, Balfour Beatty and Expro International. forces who endanger their Active contribution of the university on such high lives each day so we may level quality management forums plays a pivotal live our lives peacefully. role in giving visibility of its quality orientation and Dozens of letters have so efforts for sustainable improvements among other far been received during outstanding organizations. Further, this paves way for this campaign which will scoring higher position in HEC ranking of QECs as be sent to Armed forced per the set parameters. The link of the Quality World through an approved Magazine is: http://www.thecqi.org channel. Step forth and be a part of

Contact: Dr. M. Latif Virk, Registrar, National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, FAST House, Rohtas Road, G-9/4, Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Phone: 051-2264629, Edited & designed by: H.A. Minhas

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