EDUCATION

NIBM Diploma Awards Ceremony 2011 tomorrow

The National Institute of Business Management, or NIBM as its popularly known will take another step forward in achieving its vision of being the best business education organization in Sri Lanka tomorrow.

The NIBM has come a long way since its inception in 1968, passing many milestones in the business of training and development offering unique opportunities in management and IT education. It has successfully given to the country rare combination of a stable government sector institute and the customer driven philosophy of the private sector. As the NIBM today contemplates with satisfaction on the achievements of the past decades, it looks forward to meeting the challenges of the time in education in the management and IT fields in particular.

This ceremony marks another historic milestone in the life of the NIBM with the awarding of two thousand seventy eight (2078) in the presence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. NIBM is proud in the role it plays in education in the forward march of the country as the ‘miracle island’.

The NIBM carries a brand of its own, both locally and internationally and its triangle of management is complete and wholesome. It engages a professional and well trained staff in areas of management absorbing many sectors, ever ready to improve and develop the quality of education it imparts. Students are blessed with an internal academic faculty as well as qualified visiting staff, both local and foreign consultants.

As a government-owned statutory body functioning under the Youth Affairs and Skills Development Ministry with the able guidance of the Minister Dullas Alahapperuma, students of NIBM stand to gain recognition by the quality of its education, both here and abroad. It has not only been offering foreign degree level programmes for the last thirteen years, it has started its own degree programme with the approval of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and plans for a future with post-graduate degrees up to Master’s level, for the benefit of Sri Lankan academics as well as professionals.

Keeping to the policy of the government in becoming a knowledge-based economy, it has become necessary to review and change the existing traditional education system. NIBM has come forward to fill the vacuum that exists between now and the future in quality education. With this in view, NIBM established a National School of Business Management (NSBM) that will serve as a gateway in the Asian region as well as globally, with study programmes which integrate not only academic work but leadership ethics, global thinking/outlook, with core management skills for future leaders of the world.

Here NSBM projects a series of degrees and Master’s level programmes of its own in strategically important areas such as software engineering, network systems administration, communication and multimedia technology, tourism management and project management. Thus NIBM would fly to greater heights of a unique Sri Lankan nature with new vistas for our own youth as well as most welcome foreign students.

The most important outcome would be providing more educational opportunities at management levels. The void in the university system and those desirous of gaining up to date knowledge while in employment in the public and private sector can reach their aspirations here at NIBM - only a quick glance at the prospectus could guide them and more information is gladly provided in contacting NIBM Campus at Vidya Mawatha, Colombo 7.

NIBM has not only expanded its programmes in Diplomas, and Degrees but widened operational structure with Regional Campuses under its umbrella in Kandy, Galle, Jaffna and Kurunegala.

All these campuses are equipped with student support services as is the main campus in Colombo. Besides the regional campuses, there is the facility for all the students, with the NIBM blackboard, with an individual computer account having access to the institute’s computing facilities including email. It provides an online learning environment to complement the work of lectures, seminars and tutorials, with first class IT facilities.

The day of awards presentation is a memorable day for two thousand seventy eight (2078) awardees in areas of management and IT when doors would open for them for further studies here or in foreign universities, the dream of any youth. On realization of their dreams they can serve our motherland or humanity in any part of the world with knowledge, language and IT skills and attitudes they have developed over the years spent at NIBM.

NIBM is a student-friendly, student-centered campus Sri Lankan students are blessed with, to continue their academic work uninterrupted, undisturbed with doors open to new knowledge, universal recognition and ever widening vistas of study.

NIBM does not follow ‘a frog in the well’ attitude but adopts a more modern, universal approach constantly reviewing and updating its programmes, going by the expertise of foreign facilitators. NIBM’s foreign collaborators are University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, Malaysia and Victoria University, Australia.

NIBM’s achievements are marked by the Quality Assurance Units and ISO Certification 9001 and by being placed among the top 10 by the LMD Progress Report 2011. At NIBM there are no two words ‘Knowledge is Power’. A sincere appreciation goes to the Director General, Chairman and staff on this pleasurable and commendable uphill journey of achievement.

OpenArc organizes ‘Career Guidance Seminar’

For after A/L, O/L students on January 22:

With over two decades of experience in business and ICT education, OpenArc School of Business and Technology (OSBT), has organized a free career guidance seminar focusing after A/L and O/L students and their parents on January 22 from 2:00 pm onwards at the OpenArc Auditorium.

This seminar aims at clarifying and educating school leavers and their parents, on the most common query facing most of them.

That is the query of which career path to select and what qualifications to achieve along the way. This seminar also provides those who wish to follow ICT as a career and also for those, who are currently pursuing other careers and wish to use ICT as a tool for career development, with the necessary details of study programmes which suit their individual requirements.

Participants will also receive an opportunity to meet with industry experts and practitioners, and clarify any views they may have regarding the industry.

OpenArc Group Chairman Daya Hettiarachchi, an industry practitioner with over 30 years of experience in the fields of engineering, accounting and ICT, will be the main speaker at the seminar.

OpenArc is currently internationally recognized as one of the best institutes in the country that offers quality ICT and business education.

As a subsidiary of OpenArc Systems Management, on of the leaders in software development for banking and financial institutions in Sri Lanka, OSBT is the only institute in Sri Lanka that offers lectures for the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) degree, offered by the University of Colombo School of Computing, and provide students with in-house software development internships.

Equipped with industry practitioners and experts in the field of software development, a highly qualified and experienced panel of lecturers, state-of-the-art computer laboratories, and fully air conditioned multimedia lecture rooms, OSBT is geared to prepare students for the ICT industry.

Providing training for government teachers through the Secondary Education Modernization Project (SEMP), of the Education Ministry, conducting distant learning classes island-wide through the Higher Education Ministry’s Distant Education Modernization Project (DEMP), developing multimedia educational contents for school children, in collaboration with the of Education Ministry’s Secondary Education Modernization Project (SEMP) and the National Institute of Education (NIE), were some of the many highlighted projects completed by OSBT during the past two decades.

OpenArc has also developed software solutions for the Bank of Ceylon, Hatton National Bank, DFCC Bank, Merchant Bank, People’s Leasing Company, Seylan Leasing, Singer Finance and many other leading banks and financial institutes in Sri Lanka.

More details regarding the OpenArc Career Guidance Seminar to be held on January 22 can be obtained by visiting OpenArc School of Business and Technology, Highlevel Road, Kirulapone, Colombo 06, or by e-mailing [email protected]. Their official web site is www.openarc.edu.lk