Message of the President, November 16th, 2018

Dear friends and colleagues,

It has been some time from the step-down of the former president, Ray Hilditch, and even though we have been “quiet”, there was a lot of things the Board of Directors has worked on. In our three Skype meetings we have had in the meantime we have almost finalized the proposal of Statutes changes directed towards being compatible with ENQA requirements. Thanks for this specifically belong to the new co-opted member of the board, Polona Tominc, who mostly together with Bob Johnson, and Jan Vanherck, have not only clarified the necessary structures we have to establish, but also prepared the connected standardized forms of documents ECBE is using within its operation.

To make ENQA membership reality, we have already sent an application letter on October 30, and we hope the recently running accreditations will provide sufficient material for ENQA evaluation visit, which we can expect in the second half of 2019. In order to make it possible, though, there is still a lot of work to be done, and the major task recently is to officially amend the statutes. This will be the major point of the exceptional Annual General Meeting we are preparing for January 12, 2019. Another important point will be appointment of board members, as far as the previous two AGMs did not reach enough participation of the members. In this connection I am asking you to send me your proposals for BoD members (including their CV) before December 2, 2018, so that we can inform all the members with a sufficient advance before the exceptional AGM.

We do not expect majority of the members to physically come to the exceptional AGM, but therefore it is very important for those who will not be coming to send the proxies to those you trust and those that will be able to present your common interests (including the recent BoD members) that should project into the statutes. If we do not have enough participation, we will not be able to proceed with the ENQA membership activities. The meeting will take place in Brussels, and the necessary information (including the proxy templates) will be sent in detail by the end of November.

In the meantime, the board has agreed on the topic of the standard annual conference, which will be organized in the traditional term at the end of May (23-25), also in Brussels. The topic is “Digital transformations in higher education”, and we invite you to think about your paper related to this topic that would attract attention of the participants.

On behalf of all the Board members I wish you a pleasant and successful autumn, and I will get back to you soon with the information on our exceptional AGM.

Pavel Žufan
President

November 16th, 2018