It is Sunday night, and I have only just returned to Hong Kong from several meetings at the United World College of the Adriatic in Duino, a small village near Trieste in north-eastern Italy.  The three meetings I attended were the biannual gathering of UWC Heads, the UWC Education Committee and the UWC International Board.  Adriatic College was selected as the venue of the meetings to coincide with their 25th anniversary celebrations, and it certainly was great to share the excitement of this important stage of passing from adolescence to mature adulthood for the College.

The venue for the meetings, Adriatic College, is somewhat different from any other UWC because the College does not have its own campus, but it is integrated through the village of Duino.  As you can see from the images posted below, Duino itself is a pretty town, dominated by a cliff-top castle and offering spectacular views over the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea.  The integration of the College with the town seems to be warmly welcomed on both sides, and the sense of harmony and goodwill is palpable.

Anyone who thinks these biannual meetings are some kind of holiday or jaunt really should have witnessed the frenetic activity of these meetings.  We all try to be away from our campuses for as little time as possible, but this noble ideal comes at the significant cost of exhaustion from long and hectic schedules that genuinely reach the point of counterproductivity.

For example, on Thursday, while still not having adjusted to the difference of time zones, the Heads met from 8 am until 12:35 pm without even a coffee break.  After a short 25 minute lunch, the Education Committee met all afternoon until it was time to board a bus, visit the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (an institution with which Adriatic College has a close affinity), and then proceed for a late dinner (dinner arrived at about 9:30 pm), returning to our hotels at 11:30 pm.  For me, the return to the hotel did not mark the end of the working day, but the beginning of my daily hour (or in the case of that day, two hours) of attending to e-mails.

The following day, we started a little later (thankfully) at 9:30 am, but then proceeded without coffee breaks and only a 20 minute lunch break until 6:40 pm, at which time there was a reception with founding staff and students, followed by dinner in the canteen at 8 pm, followed in turn at 9 pm by a sensational music recital by students, followed by my daily e-mail correspondence starting at about 10:30 pm.  Fortunately, while we had been working, it was a public holiday in Hong Kong for the Chung Yeung festival, so the volume of e-mails was mercifully a little less than normal.  Nonetheless, bed was very welcome when it came!

Our meetings continued the following day (Saturday) in a different venue, the Palazzo del Governo, a magnificent building on the old square in Trieste.  So at 8 am we all boarded buses in Duino and took the short drive into Trieste.  The reason for the shift in venue was that at 11 am we joined the entire College community for their spectacular annual opening ceremony.  At Li Po Chun UWC, we handle the annual ceremony with fewer speeches and greater student involvement (our 2nd Year students put together two cultural events, one Chinese and one international, to welcome new students and begin the new year).  Adriatic College has greater dependence on the goodwill of government support, however, and the annual opening ceremony is an opportunity to involve and thank the College’s many supporters.

Held in wonderful surroundings (the photo at the top of this blog gives only a hint of the spectacular atmosphere of the Grand Theatre), the ceremony was a very formal two hour festival of excellent speeches (some in Italian, some in English), interspersed with some impressive choral and musical performances.  The keynote speaker was Professor George Walker, former Director-General of the International Baccalaureate, who presented an eloquent and perceptive challenge to the students to use their lives in ways that will benefit others.  Professor Walker always speaks brilliantly, and this was no exception.  I congratulated him after the speech over lunch, and he has kindly agreed to provide me with a copy of his address as I want to share his important challenges with the students at LPCUWC.

Following the opening ceremony, my lunch was cut short by the need to try and buy some books in Italian to support some of our self-taught language students at LPCUWC.  Saturday afternoon is not a great time to find book shops open in Trieste, but it was the only time available, so with the help of Christina, one of Adriatic College’s Italian language teachers (and a former Adtiatic College student herself), I managed to find all the books I was asked to buy by visiting several book shops.  The cost of doing this was to miss the bus provided for staff to return to Duino from Trieste - but this was actually a blessing in disguise as it gave me the chance to take one of the students’ buses instead, and I had a wonderful time catching up with students from many countries, including (most importantly for me) several of the students I had helped to select from Hong Kong to attend the College.  And then, before I had time to draw breath, I found myself on the first leg of the flight home.

So - were the meetings worthwhile?  As usual, these meetings were extremely valuable times to keep up with the rapid evolution of the United World Colleges movement.  Among the many significant issues discussed were possible reforms to the governance of the UWCs, the development of a UWC Diploma as an exit credential, risk management in colleges, funding arrangements, the allocation of College offers to National Committees for 2008, several proposals to establish new UWCs, reforming the College self-evaluation process, hearing the reports of initiatives in each UWC, and much more.

Next comes the big task of typing my reports for the meetings - probably a job that will take several days in spite of my best best efforts at two-finger typing!