ช) ล้วนปรีเปรมน าวิชา สร้างชาติสร้างตนรวมแรงรวมใจ
4.3 Kasetsart University’s Community Academic Outreach
4.3.2 Characteristics of Kasetsart University’s Community Academic Outreach
from the beginning to the end of the project.
4.3.2 Characteristics of Kasetsart University’s Community Academic Outreach
Kasetsart University’s community outreach programs and activities are associated with the university’s staff specialisms and experience. The university has launched many kinds of community academic outreach. The needs of service receivers can be divided into eight characteristics, as below.
4.3.2.1 Analyzing, Testing, Verifying, and Checking and Fixing Activities. This is specific to academic outreach. The customers receive a resolution to solve or adjust their development for a better result. This kind of academic outreach often appears in science labs, such as quality analysis for soil, water, plants, fertilizer, disease, insect, food, animal food, animal products, and so on.
4.3.2.2 Education Equipment and Tools Provision. This kind of academic outreach aims to provide equipment and devices as a service for target groups to learn and educate them about topics such as agricultural information technology, video, media, academic publishing, computer, and exhibitions.
4.3.2.3 Training and Workshop Organizing. This is to launch the activity depend on the purpose of project such as training courses for development, meetings to make agreements between participants, seminars to provide knowledge, and academic knowledge exchanges. However, this kind of academic outreach is been operated through fees, free of charge, or by hiring. Besides the organizer, it is found that the staff for this kind of project provide academic outreach by transferring knowledge, as spokesmen and coaches for both internal and external organizations,
giving speech at special occasions, inviting speakers to academic meetings, and as speakers on special topics.
4.3.2.4 Veterinary Health and Related Services. This offers services such as health check-ups, surgery, radiology diagnostics, or pathology tests. It is operated by the Faculty of Veterinary under the management of four Veterinary Teaching Hospitals: Kasetsart University Laboratory School, Bangkhen, Bangkok;
Veterinary Teaching Hospital Kamphaengsaen, Kamphaengsaen District, Nakhon Pathom Province; Kasetsart University Veterinary Teaching Hospital Hua Hin, Hua Hin District, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province; and Veterinary Teaching Hospital Nongpho, Photharam District, Ratchaburi Province.
4.3.2.5 Research, Survey, Planning, and Management Services. This is associated with the academic outreach of university staff to create interesting research topics for society or find resolutions for customers. Research methods, advice, and organizational management are used as the working tools. Furthermore, it also offers academic outreach by customers’ needs, such as projects to evaluate, plan, promote, survey needs, and area surveys.
4.3.2.6 Environmental Impact Assessment and Feasibility Studies.
This studies environmental impacts through dimensions such as society, economy, and expected future quality of life. This information could be used to consider any development project, such as motorway construction or quarrying for the cement industry.
4.3.2.7 Systems Setting, Research and Development, Designing, Inventing and Producing Services. This kind of academic outreach relates to innovation or invented systems to solve problems and respond to customers’ needs and properly report the present situation, such as developing plants to grow in any kind of weather.
4.3.2.8 Study Trip and Learning Center Services for Outsiders, such as the Natural History Museum of Faculty of Fisheries (Education center for studying fish types in Thailand), Project of Traveling in Kamphaengsaen by Kamphaengsaen Campus (to develop university area as an agricultural attraction under the concept of the living classroom), and the Lotus Park in Chalermphrakiate Sakon Nakhon Province Campus in Sakon Nakhon.
Moreover, Kasetsart University operates integrated academic outreach, in which more than two departments work together to plan, identify the purpose, operate, and manage the budget together, such as planning to generate income from traveling services by launching a project to develop staff in the travelling industry, preparing Thailand readiness for ASEAN Community, integrating waste and environment management by launching a hazardous waste management plan for the eastern community, and integrating plans to develop people by age (Kasetsart University, Planning Division, 2017: 65-66). It is seen that the characteristics of academic outreach by Kasetsart University is driven under the central and other segment’s regulations, such as the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA). Some activities are coordinated with other missions, for example missions for students to apply their knowledge from class with the community. Other examples include students providing public services to elderly community members, to preserve culture, and reconstructing mural paintings at the Ubosot. In summary, Kasetsart University’s community academic outreach is always associated with other activities.
Other than the students, the core customers are direct customers of the university, such as farmers, general people, and the community. Farmers are the main target group since they are related to the agriculture and food industry, the university’s core competency. This reflects the concept of administration and development of the university to respond to customer needs and to support community prototype development projects to increase incomes, as well as to support Kasetsart University staffs to take their roles to solve problems and crises in the country.
The study results found that Kasetsart University’s academic outreach projects seeks to make partnerships to coordinate under MOUs and are operated by committees to coordinate between the university and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives since 2003. Its mutual purpose is to improve farmer’s life quality. Both organizations apply their own specialisms in their own way. Kasetsart University provides knowledge, technology, and innovation, while the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives is a monetary institution which has core customers such as farmers, agricultural groups, agricultural institutes, agricultural cooperatives, and bank officers. The bank aims to develop the agricultural industry. There are important co- projects between KU-BAAC, such as for product and packaging development, to train
new entrepreneurs, officer competency development, information technology systems for natural resource in the learning center for a sufficiency economy prototype BAAC, and so on.
4.3.3 Organizational Structure and Academic Outreach Management