59-05-032 Proceeding

14 Proceedings of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Congress INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH OF THAILAND NATIONAL DEFENCE COLLEGE Lieutenant General Surasit Thanadtang Superintendent, National Defence College National Defence Studies Institute Background The National Defence College is Thailand’s highest educational institution on strategy and security studies. The mission of Thailand National Defence College is to provide strategic knowledge to the senior officials in both military and civilian sectors as well as employees of state organizations and private enterprises. The National Defence College’s courses are comprised of the practice of planning and the exercise of national policy as well as the development of the national strategy. In addition to the aforesaid coursework elements, NDC students need to produce strategically individual research papers on approved topics of security subjects containing comments and suggestions which are greatly helpful in solving various important issues of the country. In fact, there are approximately 300 published individual research papers in each academic year which all of research papers have not been written under cooperatively thinking process or conducted research to a common problem holistically. In providing quality education to NDC students class 57, the year of the 60 th anniversary of the National Defence College of Thailand, it is therefore significantly essential to have the concept of research development which is designed to be used in conjunction with the interdisciplinary network of the Royal Society of Thailand. In fact, the aforesaid interdisciplinary network of the Royal Council is an organization under the patronage of Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn which initiated interdisciplinary action by exchanging information and knowledge as well as academic opinion in order to make NDC students’ research papers to be the practical guideline for solving national problems in holistic and multi-dimensional views. Clearly, the benefits of conducting interdisciplinary research of NDC students 57 th lead National Defence College of Thailand to have great determination and strong commitment in continuing the practical concept pragmatically for providing quality education to the next generation of NDC students (from the NDC class 58 onwards). In fact,The National Defence College ofThailand sets the stage to perform interdisciplinary research program for students who voluntarily participate in the project allowing them to plan and create individual research projects properly. At the same time, they are valuable interdisciplinary research projects for offering to the government for solving various national big issues. It is clear that the benefits of the aforesaid interdisciplinary research projects respond to 11 sections of government policywhich alsomakeNDC students’ research projects valuable knowledge sources for related government departments and organizations.