General Assemblies and Workshops – Page 4

CEENQA Workshop and General Assembly May 22-23, 2015

2024-12-092015-05-30 by Jan Philipp Engelmann

The 27-member Central and Eastern European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education held its annual meeting on 22-23 May 2015 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The workshop and general assembly were hosted by the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education (SQAA/NAKVIS), a CEENQA member.

The annual CEENQA meeting opened with welcoming words from Iring Wasser, CEENQA President. He was followed by the just appointed Slovenian Minister of Education, Science and Sport, Maja Makovec Brenčič, herself a Full Professor of International Business at Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana and a former president of the Council of Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education of Slovenia. Ivan Leban, host of the meeting, also welcomed the participants with a few words on his agency, SQAA.

The workshop theme was Impact of Quality Assurance and Accreditation, a topic widely acknowledged as timely, given that hardly any research into the topic exists. Professor Theodor Leiber from the German CEENQA member agency evalag presented the background and results of the Impact Analysis of Quality Assurance in Higher Education(IMPALA) project. Heli Mattisen, head of the Estonian Higher Education Quality Agency (EKKA) described a recent national project surveying the impact of quality assurance at higher education institutions. Blazhe Todorovski, representing the European Students’ Union (ESU) presented this organisation and projects dealing with quality assurance and its impact. Professor Ivan Leban, director of SQAA, as host of the event, introduced his presentation with some information on Slovenian higher education and went on to present ideas on quality assurance in relation to business and industry. Josep Grifoll from AQU Catalunya and a member of the ENQA working group on the impact of quality assurance presented the first results of the project.

The General Assembly of CEENQA was a business meeting of the network. Three Board member positions, including that of the president and the vice-president, were up for election. President Iring Wasser from ASIIN, Germany, was re-elected as Board member and President for a third and final two-year term. Vice-President Ivan Leban from SQAA, Slovenia, was also reconfirmed in his position, for a second two-year term. Martina Vidlakova from the Accreditation Commission of the Czech Republic was elected as a new Board member.

running international projects where CEENQA is a partner – BIHTEK, ALIGN, BHQFHE with multiple partners in the Central and Eastern European region, and QUALITAS involving the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) – were discussed.
2016 general assembly and workshop will celebrate the 15th anniversary of CEENQA, and return to Krakow, Poland, the location of its founding. The meetings will be hosted by the University Accreditation Commission of Poland (UAC) together with the Polish Accreditation Commission (PKA).

The presentations of the workshop can be accessed here: Leban final, Heli Mattisen, J Grifoll, T Leiber, Todorovski.

Workshop and General Assembly in Ljubljana, May 22-23, 2015

2024-12-092015-05-24 by Jan Philipp Engelmann

The annual CEENQA workshop and general assembly will be held on Friday and Saturday, May 22-23, in Ljubljana. The event is kindly hosted by CEENQA Slovenian member SQAA. The details of the event follow shortly.

CEENQA Workshop and General Assembly in Pristina, May 23-24, 2014

2024-12-092014-05-25 by Jan Philipp Engelmann

The Kosovo Accreditation Agency KAA has very kindly hosted this year’s CEENQA events in Pristina. A wonderful trip to the snowy caps of Šar Mountain and the Dinarides range, culminating in a delicious dinner in the historic town of Prizren, was heartily appreciated by all participants. To everyone’s regret, President Iring Wasser had to cancel his participation at the last minute for health reasons. Vice-President Alexander Kohler took over as chair with assistance from Board member and host Ferdije Zhushi Etemi.

The workshop on May 23 sought to explore “What Makes a Successful Quality Assurance Agency?”. Minister of Education, Science and Technology Rame Buja welcomed the participants, including guests Steve Bristow, a member of the KAA Board, the speakers Lukas Bischof of CHE Consult, Germany and André Govaert from KU Leuven, Belgium as well as CEENQA project manager Mila Zarkh, for whom this was the first CEENQA meeting. Mila Zarkh presented the procedure and preliminary results of the UNESCO/INQAAHE survey adapted to CEENQA on “Practices in External Quality Assurance”. She was followed by the presentations of Lukas Bischof, André Govaert and Ferdije Etemi.

May 24, the General Assembly discussed progress in the EU projects BIHTEK, on benchmarking in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and ALIGN, on aligning study programmes with qualification frameworks, in which CEENQA is a partner. The Romanian Agency ARACIS had also organised an EU-funded project hosting staff visits from two CEENQA agencies to study review methodology and accompany site visits for one week.

Four Board members had left their agencies and hence the CEENQA Board, so that new members, including the Vice-President and Treasurer, had to be elected at the General Assembly. The new Board members with two-year terms are

Dhurata Bozo, APAAL Albania
Cristina Ghitulica, ARACIS Romania
Nora Skaburskiene, SKVC Lithuania
Izabella Kwiatkowska-Sujka, PKA Poland – Treasurer

Continuing Board member Ivan Leban was elected Vice- President.

The 2015 meetings will be hosted by SQAA Slovenia, and in 2016 the two Polish CEENQA members would organize the event jointly, taking the occasion to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of the formal founding of the CEE Network in Krakow in 2001.

The presentations are accessible here: Nadejda Velișco, Basri Muja, Ferdije Etemie, André Govaert, Nora Skaburskiene, Mila Zarkh. The presentation by Lukas Bischof will be uploaded at a later date.

Next CEENQA General Assembly and Workshop in Romania

2024-12-092013-06-02 by Jan Philipp Engelmann

The 2013 workshop and general assembly of CEENQA is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, May 31-June 1. Non-members are welcome to attend the workshop. The meetings will take place in Romania and will be hosted by ARACIS. For more details, please look at the workshop program and the general assembly program.

CEENQA Workshop and General Assembly 2013, May 31- June 1, 2013

2024-12-092013-06-02 by Jan Philipp Engelmann

The Central and Eastern European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies held its annual workshop and general assembly on May 31 and June 1 in Bucharest, Romania. The events were hosted by the Romanian quality assurance agency ARACIS.

The workshop, titled “Benchmarking and Other Best Practices in Quality Assurance: An International Perspective”, linked to the TEMPUS project BIHTEK in which CEENQA partners with an international consortium led by KAHO Sint-Lieven, Belgium, with the aim of establishing good practices in quality benchmarking in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A stimulating presentation by Cathrine Connor, head of the Quality Enhancement Unit at London Metropolitan University, laid the groundwork for the participants’ contributions and discussion.

The general assembly admitted two new members, the Higher Education Accreditation Agency of Republika Srpska (HEAARS) and Association for Evaluation and the Accreditation of Medical Education Programs (TEPDAD) from Turkey. With this the total membership of CEENQA reaches 27 agencies in 19 countries and a pan-European agency.

The assembly elected a new Board: Iring Wasser(ASIIN, Germany, 2^nd term) as President, Alexander Kohler (AQ Austria, 2^nd term) as Vice-President, Adrian Miroiu (ARACIS, Romania, 2^nd term) as Treasurer, and members Ferdije Etemi (KAA, Kosovo, 1^st term), Hasan Bicak (YÖDAK, North Cyprus, 1^st term), Mieczyslaw Socha(PKA, Poland), and Ivan Leban (SQAA, Slovenia, 1^st term).