Season's Greetings, Updates, and Call for Feedback on Regional Challenges

Letter from the AJCU-EAO Chair

14 December 2009

To All the Members of the AJCU EAO:

As the coming of the Messiah nears, we have been invited to rejoice!

We rejoice also in the blessings the Lord has given us in our shared participation in the intellectual apostolate or in the higher educational apostolate of the Society of Jesus in East Asia and Oceania! Thank you for all you do to make this apostolate fruitful and to enhance our collaboration in mission!

Even as Christmas and the New Year approach we continue to prepare for the International Conference for Jesuit Higher Educational with its theme, "Shaping the Future," to be held in Mexico City from 22 to 24 of April, 2010.

Again I invite you to register yourselves and your companion using the electronic registration facility that is now a part of our webpage <www.ajcu-eao.org>. Open the webpage. On the right hand side there is a box clearly marked "Register Now. Click here." This will facilitate your registration. We assure you: the credit card data you send in this process is secure.

When you register, it would help our tracking if you tell us at AJCU-EAO whom you have registered. Just email me or Mr. Jay Salvosa <jsalvosa@gmail.com>. We will confirm with Mexico whether you have successfully registered.

Meanwhile, a team (Atty. Rose Sergio, Mr. Jay Salvosa, Mr. Sonny Virtus and myself) has put together a preliminary draft of a paper entitled "Regional Challenges in Education for East Asia and Oceania" (click here to view the document) based on the minutes of our various meetings, the survey questionnaires we have asked you to fill out, and readings on the situation of higher education in our region. Of course, it would have been nicer if we had had more time to gather data, evaluate them together, then come to consensus on what the regional challenges are. But we lacked opportunity for this. Or you lacked the time to respond to our questionnaires. So we have come up with this paper - clearly, an imperfect work in progress.

You will help us bring it forward if you read it, correct it, enhance it with you comments and views - or with better data than we have so far been able to gather. Please send in your comments before January 15, 2010.

We shall soon be submitting a similar paper on our distinctive Mission and Identity.

Meanwhile, a blessed Christmas to all and a fruitful New Year!

Sincerely in Our Lord,

(SGD) Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J.