Rustaq College of Education , Institutional Quality Audit, Feb 2014
 
Dr Basma Al Baharna
 

Dr. Al-Baharna is Senior Director at the Directorate of Higher Education Higher Education Reviews (DHR) at the National Authority for Qualifications & Quality Assurance of Education & Training (NAQQAET) in the Kingdom of Bahrain. She joined the Authority in November 2009 and has since participated as Review Director and Panel Member in several institutional and programme quality reviews of higher education institutions in Bahrain. Dr. Al-Baharna is currently chairing the QQA Strategic Planning Committee and is a member of the QQA Academic Committee, QQA Excellence Committee and QQA/HEC (Higher Education Council) Steering Committee. She is also actively involved in the capacity-building activities in quality assurance related issues conducted by DHR.    Prior to joining QQA, Dr. Al-Baharna was the Director of the Biotechnology Programme at Arabian Gulf University (AGU) in Bahrain.  She first joined AGU as a lecturer in 1991; in 1998, she obtained her Ph.D. in Bioscience and Technology from the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Alexandria.  She was promoted to Assistant Professor of Biotechnology in 1999 and consequently appointed as the Biotechnology Programme Director in 2002.  During her affiliation with AGU, that spanned 18 years, Dr. Al-Baharna was actively involved in the University’s various activities as a member of the ‘President’s Consultancy Committee’, the ‘AGU Publications and Branding Committee’, as well as Academic Committees of the Biotechnology, Environmental Management and Laboratory Medicine Programmes.    The current professional interests of Dr. Al-Baharna include Quality Assurance, Higher Education, Strategic Planning, Organizational Change and Knowledge Management.

 
Dr. Kathryn Chang Barker
 
Dr. Kathryn Chang Barker is a consulting education futurist and higher education specialist with a PhD in Education Administration and Policy Studies from the University of Alberta, Canada.  Dr. Barker has experienced life and work in higher education in Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Qatar, China and Oman. In 2021 she launched Education Futures International in Oman, building on 40+ years of experience as FuturEd.  She works with senior university leadership, using her cultural adaptability and extensive expertise in strategic and operational planning, environmental scanning and trend analysis, faculty development and teaching excellence, international education and internationalization, community engagement, lifelong learning, national standards development and accreditation, quality assurance mechanisms, ICT and learning technologies, ePortfolio implementation, operationalizing graduate attributes, leadership and innovation. She has given numerous workshops recently regarding lifelong learning, eLearning quality and ePortfolio implementation.  Dr. Barker is the author quality standards for learning systems, e.g., Canadian Recommended eLearning Guidelines, the eQcheck eLearning quality certification system, the FuturEd Consumer’s Guide to eLearning, and a Guide to Return on Investment in Training..She has served as the Special Advisor on Higher Education to the Minister of Education in Qatar. Annually, she teaches intercultural leadership in China at USTC.   In Oman and committed to Oman, Dr Barker is experienced and qualified to conduct program and project evaluation, workshops to enhance teaching excellence, and projects to address quality assurance issues.
 
Mr. Pradeep Karun
 
Mr Pradeep was formerly the Deputy Dean (Planning & Administration) at the International College of Engineering & Management (ICEM), Muscat, Oman. He joined the International College of Engineering & Management (formerly known as Fire Safety Engineering College) in 2001. He then became the Head of Well Engineering Programme in 2003. From 2008 to 2017 he was the Deputy Dean (Planning & Administration) at ICEM. Pradeep holds a graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and a post graduate degree in Metallurgical Engineering. He worked two years in a major steel melting plant in India before moving to academia in 1989. He is a member of American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Welding Society, Society of Petroleum Engineers and Oman Society of Engineers.
 
Mr. Robert Carmichael
 
Prior to joining AUQA in 2002, Rob was the Head of the Office for Quality Education at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and prior to that worked in the vocational education and training sector as a curriculum and educational development specialist.  Since 2002 Rob has been the Audit Director for 11 audits conducted by AUQA, including in 2006 the first audit of a non self-accrediting institution to be audited by AUQA. He also represented AUQA on the Working Group established by the Australian Federal Government for the auditing of non-self accrediting Higher Education Providers. He is therefore familiar with auditing a wide-range of education and training institutions in terms of their type, size, complexity, and program profiles.  In 2007 Rob participated in the project to establish the Universities Review Unit (URU) in Bahrain, and visited Bahrain in October that year to assist the development of URU professional staff with the writing of review reports. That same year Rob was also contracted by the Hong Kong Universities Grants Committee to facilitate the general induction and pre-audit intensive training of auditors on the register of the new Quality Assurance Council in Hong Kong.