Visit to UiTM - Shah Alum

On Tuesday I finally met Gy. In 2006 Gy sent an e-mail to a colleague, Dave Garson, inquiring about developing a relationship between NC State and UiTM. Dave forwarded the message to me and I followed up. (Gy is the woman on the right.) Our correspondence got me started on applying for a Fulbright. Nothing came of my contacts at UiTM, Gy was preoccuppied with finishing up her dissertation. But she started me thinking and getting a plan in place.

On Tuesday I gave a presentation on my research on Collaborations in Malaysia. For the 2nd time in doing this research I was reminded that "collaboration" has a bad connotation. I promised to drop the term. I plan to switch to "Cooperation and Partnerships."

One person felt that I was studying "marginalized" groups. She seemed to have a concern about a "global agenda." I am not sure I captured her meaning correctly, but she does have a point. Although it seemed to be evident in only one of the collaborations I studied, probably a result of funding. Similarly, another mentioned that Human Rights groups have about being coopted - a problem associated with foreign funding. Of course, with foreign funding drying up this may be less of an issue.

Another felt that the disability groups had made progress on accessible transportation was that Air Asia (a success) and Rapid KL (in progress) were forced to make changes. Of course, I think that it was the activities of the disability groups that forced the change. She also wondered how much collaborations were hindered by the lack of staff and depending on volunteers - a problem with the human rights groups. I think that she is on to something there.

I also learned that I should be happy with my response rate - a number of people in the audience felt that Malaysians were less likely to respond to surveys from other Malaysians

A problem that I had noted that the audience agreed with was the difficulty in developing relations with the government. The issues are (a) developing a relationship, (b) having an impact, (c) not feeling used by government. I was also told that I probably got a better response rate to the survey, b/c I was a foreigner