Message of the President, November 3rd, 2017
Dear friends and colleagues,
Greetings from London, where autumn is upon us and Christmas is just around the corner. Since I last wrote, I have been on academic business in Sweden, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Spain – a salutary reminder of the global world we all inhabit today.
I am looking forward to meeting fellow Board members in Madrid on November 16 and 17, when we will update each other on ECBE activities. Bob Johnson will report on progress with ENQA recognition, our top priority this year. Jan Vanherck will give us feedback on financials and propose a budget for next year. Dmitry Kuzin will update us on preparation for our 2018 Annual Conference in Madrid on May 25 – 27. The theme of the conference is “developing global competencies in a changing world”. More detailed information will be on our website shortly, together with details of the pre-conference seminar on May 24, which members often find so helpful. This year’s topic is “quality assurance and student-centred learning”. Do please give us some feedback on all these agenda items and suggest others for us to discuss.
Elsewhere, our Executive Director, Jacques Bouché, has been busy flying the flag for ECBE in a number of arenas. Most recently he attended the ENQA AGM in Paris before going on to a conference on African Capacity Building in Lagos as well as meeting with recent new and potential Nigerian Members of ECBE. He is also planning to maintain our important alliance with ACBSP in the US, by attending their region 8 conference in Marrakech, Morocco. We look forward to receiving reports on these activities, together with feedback from Jacques and Dmitry on recent recruitment work in Baku, Azerbaijan. Once again, I am struck by how global ECBE is becoming and how much we continue to rely on you all to refer new members to us. Just one successful referral from every one of you would double our numbers!
As dark nights draw in and students bombard you with assignments, I wish you a fruitful end to the year and look forward to catching up with you all again in 2018.
Warmest best wishes,
Ray Hilditch
President
November 3rd, 2017.