Committees and Councils

In order to provide advice, support and guidance to the centers at NUST and UET Peshawar, the following committees and councils were established and are meeting on a regular basis:

National Steering Committee
Led by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, the National Steering Committee for the U.S.-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies program met quarterly to review progress and work plans and to leverage plans regarding research and development. Under the leadership of the Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, the committee provided policy guidance and recommendations for effective and timely implementation of the program. The committee also reviewed the progress of academic activities and the results of the research projects.

University-Based Steering Committees
The steering committees at each university serve as guiding councils that continuously provide strategic guidance, review project progress and recommend changes to ensure that USPCAS-E achieves its target and goals. The committees also help build support and foster cooperation among relevant stakeholders.

Policy and Research Councils
The role of the policy and research council at each university is to devise research grant mechanisms, review all applied research grant applications and ensure relevance to Pakistan’s energy needs and requirements. The councils, which include relevant stakeholders, also help formulate the applied research agenda to promote research and development in the energy sector and technology-based conducive policies to overcome energy-related challenges in Pakistan.

National Stakeholder Meetings On Energy
In order to substantially improve the capacity of Pakistan’s higher education institutions to drive private sector innovation, modernization, strengthen government policy to stimulate economic growth and contribute solutions to Pakistan’s energy challenges, it is necessary to engage stakeholders in order to design outputs with their partaking. To achieve this objective, ASU helped NUST and UET Peshawar organize regular national stakeholder meetings in Pakistan.

These meetings were organized to provide an opportunity to key stakeholders in the energy sector to have candid discussions on ways to create a collaborative and sustainable environment under which stakeholders and partner universities can work to enhance cooperation and foster partnerships.

The meetings have three key objectives:

  1. Curriculum Alignment: To discuss the strategies to align the curriculum development at NUST and UET Peshawar to the demands of the industry and other employers.
  2. Applied Research: To develop strategies to align the applied research agenda at NUST and UET Peshawar to the needs of the energy sector and other employers in Pakistan.
  3. Sustainability: To foster strategies and systems to promote sustainability of the Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS) institutions beyond the life of USAID funding.