Dr. Eva Bilhuber Galli

Lectures, workshops, conference

I had the honour to serve again as B360 volunteering expert for three weeks at Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Windhoek, Namibia. As it was the third time, I did not expect the mindblowing effect of my first stay. Rather I had the idea of entering a welcome relaxed “routine”. But life – and particularly Namibian life - proved me so wrong! I never thought that this assignment would become my most intense, educative, colourful, vibrant and emotional assignment I experienced so far.

My assignment consisted of a mix of mostly long term projects to support new educational offerings in order to help raise graduate employability in Namibia:

1. International Conference “Join Forces – Tapping Youth Employability Opportunities”

2. Creating Mentoring Impact – Workshop for Worplace Mentors and Lecturers

3. “What next - and how to go about” – 2-hours career development shot for 3rd years students

4. Research-Fellow Support - continued from last years

1. International conference “Join Forces – Tapping Youth Employability Opportunities”

The core reason for my assignment was a true “first” for all of us: for NUST, for B360 and myself. We organized and hosted together with Hochschule Wismar, Vaal University of Southafrica and DAAD as main sponsor an interdisciplinary and cross-regional Conference on youth employability opportunities. Youth unemployment is a huge concern worldwide. 73 billion young people have no employment with expected raising tendency. Particularly Namibia suffers currently a shocking high rate of 34%. One core reason is the mismatch between skills that educational systems teach in good intent and what economy and markets need. This mismatch holds true as well for Europe and US with a high lack of professional workers and a 29% dropout rate of students in e.g. Germany. No matter whether we talk about Europe or Southern Africa, to move substantially forward in this topic, particularly bridging and linking efforts between the various systems and areas needed: i.e. between educational institutions and employers, between graduate Work-Integrated Learning Programs, entrepreneurship and vocational initiatives, etc. This is was this Conference was exactly focusing on under the headline of “Join Forces”.

We were delighted to be asked as an international partner to set-up this conference. Accordingly, we invested in this 8 month project together with NUST and the partnering universities to design, organize and facilitate this important dialogue platform between research and practice in the field. The honorable key not of the Deputy Minister of Higher Education of Namibia, the various presentations and breakaway sessions on projects, latest research results and very engaged panel discussions created a great momentum among students, researchers, educational, governmental responsibilities and employers that called for an annual repetition of such an interdisciplinary dialogue and incubator platform. And our partner university Tsiba – who took part as well - already offered to organize the next one in Capetown Southafrica. The positive impressions were echoed in the feedback as well as the individual videotestimonials we captured from the Conference. Have a deeper look on the programme, speakers here.

Personally, it was a great highlight for me of what cross-regional collaboration on eye-level can evoke. In the light of what we were able to accomplish together, the intense “sweaty” 8 months of prework hardly got forgotten. I added on my “European way” of planning” a huge amount of improvisation and last-minute skills which I learned from my Namibian NUST colleagues. In turn, the colleagues from the Organizing Committee were grateful for some structured project management guidance. Among my biggest learnings was to get in touch with international protocols for such events including, when and how to greet a minister, and to jump into a live interview in Namibian Television at prime time in the evening. At the end, I believe it was a sound and by all stakeholders very much appreciated contribution to a purpose that is important to all of us – no matter if in Africa or Europe - as the young generation is our future.

2. Creating Mentoring Impact – for Workplace Mentors and Lecturers

NUST in partnership with B360 supports graduate employability with the Career Development Workshop (CSW). Before students do their mandatory internship as part of their studies (Work-Integrated Learning) they are trained in career skills, e.g. selection interviews, presentation, as well as in workplace skills, e.g. teamwork, communication skills and entrepreneurial skills over 4 days. Investing in an impact analysis about students’ internship experience, we found that there is a need as well to invest in trainings on the workplace side for effective mentoring. Having piloted successfully a short version of a Mentoring-Workshop last year, we run this workshop again this year on a 1.5 day basis with around 30 workplace mentors and had extremely encouraging feedback. It was highly appreciated to bring university WIL-Coordinators and Workplace Mentors closer together and to train – partly with real students - coaching skills for creating empowerment and challenging learning experiences during their internship. There was particularly interest raised from the private sector as they seek to include students’ talents to fuel innovation in a more entrepreneurial way as it is currently foreseen from the WIL Curriculum.

As a further source of advice for students regarding career development we identified lecturers and WIL-Coordinators. Accordingly, we offered a 1 day workshop of Mentoring Skills for about 15 NUST lecturers. Again, the workshop was highly appreciated from the participants. Among others, they appreciated to learn about other lecturers, to exchange and to feel they are not alone with their struggles to guide and support students successfully beyond knowledge acquisition.

3. “What next – and how to go about” - 2 hours Career Development shot for 3rd Year Human Resources students

As my stay fell at the end of the year, Enzy Kaura, HR Lecturer, had the idea to use the last class of the 3rd year students - before they leave University - for a brief “CSW-light” session on application, selection interviews and working behaviors. We invited Nico Smit, who is involved in the selection of B360 interns for Switzerland, into this wonderful triple-Co-Teaching session. Even though this was only a very short session, the approx. 40 students reported a massive gratefulness in their feedback. As their does not exist such things as a “Career Center” at NUST they recommended to provide such an application-aid offering in a far more extensive way in the future. Enzy decided to incorporate this session on an annual basis for the 3rd year students and maybe this idea can even be extended to a 2-days training.

Further, we used for a first time a web-based tool to collect feedback in class in realtime over mobile phones. We were able to show the results immediately in class. By that we could ask some questions around their most important interests at the beginning of the session and taylor the session accordingly. The tool is a great possibility to interact with large groups and to let students participate. Particularly for shy students it’s a great help to voice up their ideas and questions they would otherwise not raise during class.

4. Research-Fellow Support

Research is a huge topic at NUST. Only having become a University some years ago, the institution needs to legitimate their status by respective research and research-qualified staff. Accordingly, the HR department is about to set-up a Master Programme that should start off next year. This involves as well a call to HR department lecturers to upskill and go about their research qualification, i.e. their PhD. Currently, only the NUST Business School offers Master degree programmes in Management with high volumes of enrolled students but with difficulties to support their thesis finalization. The same challenge appears in the bridge-programme called “HR Honors” – a one year study programme to qualify graduates specifically for research by writing a mini-thesis. What is particularly missing, is a research fellow community to go about very practical hacks, such as which and how to browse journals, how to find and formulate research questions as well as encouraging motivational and emotional support. As I went through a PhD myself, including international publication, the idea was born three years ago to offer support on a “fellow-level” and share insights and experiences from “fellow-to-fellow”. This year again there was a great demand in such “Fellow-Talks”. Accordingly, we offered the following sessions:

• “How to write-up your thesis” 2-hours session for HR Honours visited by about 40 students and by all the supervising HR lecturers. It was a lively discussion between students, lecturers and myself and the feedback showed that students appreciated the last “kick” of practice hacks before they now have to write up their thesis. One student wanted to submit that day but got new ideas how to improve and Fiina Shimaneni, one HR lecturer, told me that even for herself, she got some fresh impulses for her own research.

• “Mission possible ?!– how to go about a research project” 2 hours session for MBA students of NUST Business School. Although this was a very short-notice invitation, approx.. 30 students showed up and again it was a very lively, enriching best-practice exchange. Feedback showed that this kind of Fellow-Talk is most helpful when it comes to the question, what could be good next steps how to go about etc. Interestingly, even three students from JUNAM showed-up… Seemingly a need beyond NUST.

• Individual Research Fellow-Support: This idea evolved from my first stay together with Armin Hollenstein, who helped with the statistical analysis. As all HR lecturers need to go about a PhD now with supervisors situated mostly in SA, there is a strong need for research mentoring at place. This time 4 people signed-up and asked for some time to reflect on how to proceed in their research pieces. I am not a professional in that, but I encountered myself as most beneficial in this period a helping hand of fellows who have gone through this already. However, the most important result that people report is that they get encouraged and motivated to proceed and not to give up. It’s very clear that this is a longterm investment. And most of the lecturers stay with me in contact along the year. Meanwhile two of my first Mentees, Lydiah Wambui and Andrew Jeremiah, submitted! And I hope to hear of more over the next years.

Personal Message

Again, this stay was a fully packed and intense working stay – but again in same ways intensively rewarding and enriching. I am very grateful for the brilliant collaboration experience that I encountered at NUST again with the several departments, units, lecturers, colleagues and responsible managers. We learned to overcome together the struggles that come up in such longterm partnering boundaryspanning mandates across cultures. By respecting and bringing together our different working styles and strengths we realized what only a partnership collaboration can realize: to make the whole more then the sum of its parts and achieving what no one would have been able to achieve alone.

I am grateful to all collaborating partners, and particularly B360, for their unwavering trust: Again, this was a thriving and successful partnering collaboration experience that money cannot buy – and again, it opened up so much room for more…