Two-Day COBEC Conference Wraps Up in Belmopan

The Consortium for Belize Educational Cooperation thirty-second conference also concluded today at the UB Campus in Belize City. COBEC has been around for over thirty years and it connects Belize with the United States and other countries to strengthen and expand higher education opportunities. This week they hosted the education expo which was followed by the conference on Thursday and Friday. Belize’s Co-Chair of COBEC, Karen Martinez explains what the conference is all about.

Karen Martinez

Karen Martinez, Co-Chair, COBEC (Belize)

“Since we are in Belize, this is to provide our U.S. partners with more opportunities to understand what we do so that they can be better able to navigate and ensure that this partnership is smooth. So, today we will have communication about quality in education from our perspective; so that is the theme, “Quality in Higher Education.”  We will also have different organizations, although they are not education, influence the flow, networking and relationships, such as immigration. So, they will be here to talk to us how to have a smooth flow like when our colleagues want to come to bring students that they will understand the in house requirement. We will also have the Ministry of Health because our relationship is not only about education, but it is a partnership to develop Belize. So, we have people who come in and do things in health and not necessarily education. So, they will get to our standards for practice. We will also be highlighting some partnerships. We have some schools going through a quality assurance initiative. So, today we will have partners from U.S, along with a couple of us presenting information on best practices in quality assurance and we will be talking about collaboration among ourselves.”