News Archive

Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer

An academic partnership between Avondale College and the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Thailand-based Mission College has helped the latter attain university status.

The two higher education providers offer a Master of Education with a major in teaching English to speakers of other languages, allowing students at Mission College to transfer credits to their Avondale course and to graduate with an Avondale degree. Fourteen students have completed the course since the partnership began in 2007.

Mission College president Dr Warren Shipton describes the partnership as being critically important. "We could not have reached the nominated government targets easily on our own."

The partnership may also offer academic and economic benefits to Avondale. "The academic benefits result from academic collaboration, which improves course quality, and the economic benefits result from improved access by Asian students to Avondale courses made possible by the partnership with Mission College," says Dr Vivienne Watts, vice-president (administration and research) at Avondale. She notes, too, how students in Asian countries place high value on the title, "university," "so offering other courses in partnership with what is now Asia-Pacific International University will appeal."

Asia-Pacific International University is the only Adventist tertiary institution in the church's Southeast-Asia Union Mission. Originally established in Singapore in 1905 by the church's then Australasian Union Conference, Asia-Pacific began a School of Nursing in Bangkok in 1947 and moved to its present campus in Muak Lek about 10 years ago, when the Singaporean government resumed the original campus. The university offers programs in liberal arts, nursing science and science, and enrols more than 900 students from 40 countries. It also operates an Adventist Colleges Abroad program in Thai and Chinese culture.--with Record