Durban University of Technology doctor receives prestigious award
Dr Lavern Samuels, the current director of International Education and Partnerships at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), recently receievd a lifetime achievement award for his work in international education.
THE director of International Education and Partnerships at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and president of the International Education Association of South Africa, Dr Lavern Samuels, was recently awarded the BMI/Times Higher Education Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution in shaping the international education landscape in South Africa and abroad. He received this highest honour at the NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo, which was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Commenting on his accolade, Dr Samuels said it came as a surprise to him as he had attended the NAFSA Conference to present two papers, not knowing that he was going to receive the award at the end of the conference.
“The NAFSA Conference was an event that I normally attended, but I had no idea that I was attending to receive my award. I thought I was invited to the dinner because I was one of the speakers at the conference. Strangely enough, they sent a second request for me to confirm my attendance; I never realised that there were people put in charge to get me into the event on time. At the dinner, they announced that they would be giving out awards, and when it came to my award, they started reading out a citation, which I didn’t realise was mine. I turned to the person next to me to say that this person had done similar things to me in my career, until it became impossible not to know it was me,” shared Dr Samuels.
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He indicated that it turned out to be a pleasant surprise to be given this award. He had served in a number of different associations, but the bulk of his international education work had been at DUT for the past 15 years.
“My work is about making international education at DUT inclusive, to look beyond just the few that are able to travel internationally. I have done a lot of work on the internationalisation of the curriculum and on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Due to these innovative and creative approaches to internationalisation, our international education has reached far more of our students and our staff. It has made it far more inclusive, and it has become more impactful to the curriculum. We are trying to ensure that by 2030, everybody at DUT has an international experience even though not everyone will be able to travel abroad – but that everyone will be able to engage internationally in the classroom and beyond,” explained Dr Samuels.
He shared that he has been the president of the International Education Association of South Africa for two terms, where he has done a lot in driving international education nationally, as well, to give South African students an opportunity to have an international experience. Through scholarships, such as Abe Bailey and Erasmus, many students at DUT have had an international experience. He proudly shared that DUT students had been successful 14 times in the last 15 years in the prestigious Abe Bailey Scholarship.
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In addition, Dr Samuels has done a lot of work in the virtual space to promote international virtual exchange and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). He also serves as the president of the International Virtual Exchange Consortium, where DUT plays a leading role. DUT staff have been trained on how to engage with international partners and to conduct collaborative online teaching in their classrooms.
“We have had over 150 of these COIL projects going on at DUT, across our six faculties in partnering across six continents. In 2020, we won a bid to be the consultants to the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and we developed a toolkit for virtual exchange and COIL. This is a toolkit that is now being used by 600 member universities of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. In 2021, DUT won the AIEA Award for Excellence and Innovation in Internationalisation because of the type of innovative internationalisation we are doing at this university. Our research at DUT has also become far more internationalised – we are collaborating with partners around the world,” added Dr Samuels, who indicated that there was still a lot more they intend to do to put DUT on the international map.
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