Message of the President, November 3rd, 2020

Dear friends and colleagues,

Long time, no hear...
Well, a lot happened in the period since the previous letter, and all of us have been learning to cope with the new situation. This included the adoption of new procedures for online Review Visits.
The same applied for our ENQA visit: originally planned for June in a standard format, but moved to October 5–7, completely online. We have used the time for getting prepared as good as we can.
Based on a visit simulation we have updated several accreditation procedures and the Bye-Laws (you can download the latest version after logging-in to our website), and we have addressed organizational matters. The resulting organizational chart can also be found on our website.

The planning for the Annual Conference, the Pre-Conference Seminar and the AGM has been changed. You might have noticed these adaptations, for which we apologize; but times are simply not easy…

The main decisions of the BoD can be summarized in this way:

• For legal reasons, we still must organize the Annual General Meeting, so we need your assistance! It will be organized on December 15th, 3pm CET in an online format.
  As always, we need to have a quorum to be able to take the necessary decisions:

(1) approve the reports of the President, Chair of Commissioners, and Treasurer (Financial statements and Annual budget);
(2) (re) elect new members for the BoD.

You will receive all necessary documents in a separate email.

• We will organize the Annual Conference 2020 on December 10-11, also in an online format. We will:

(1) share the report from the ENQA visit;
(2) be celebrating 25 years of ECBE;
(3) organize a Pre-Conference Seminar.

• Topic for the Conference is “25 years of ECBE: Searching for Excellence in Business Education” and for the Seminar “Standards of quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): Commitment to creating a quality culture in business education”. There seems to be a lot of “good material” to be discussed and lots of experience to be exchanged among the members. Therefore we ask you to think and act quickly, and inform as soon as possible our Vice-President, Dmitry Kuzin (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), who is the academic supervisor of the Conference, about the title of the paper you would like to present.
• Participation to both Annual Conference and the Seminar is free of charge.
• We (or actually Polona Tominc, Director of Accreditation) are preparing the schedule of the Review Visits in a standard way, but we are ready to move them to online format, if the situation forces us to do so.

For the AGM there are 2 ways to participate:

• (preferred) Personal online participation; we will send you an invitation for the online meeting and instructions how to connect.
• Send the proxy (will be attached to the e-mail with the detailed programme of the AGM) to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Before the meeting, you will have the possibility to instruct your proxy about the voting.

If you have any comments or questions, please send them to me or any board member; your remarks will certainly be considered, and your questions will be answered.

The current composition of the voting members of BoD is:

• Maja Fošner (mandate till AGM in 2021)
• Dmitry Kuzin (mandate till AGM in 2021)
• Teresa Shafer (mandate till AGM in 2021)
• Alkis Tsiklis (mandate till AGM in 2021)
• Pavel Žufan (co-opted by the BoD in May 2019)
• Martin Janacek, representative of employers (co-opted by the BoD on September 7, 2020)

László Szepesi recently decided to resign.

This means we have 3 “vacancies” to be filled in by the upcoming AGM:

• Pavel Žufan and Martin Janacek both are co-opted, so their mandates run until the AGM. Both are available for re-election. Please remember that, given by the Statutes, the representative of employers is a “compulsory” board member.
• Filling the mandate that became vacant due to the resignation of László Szepesi.

May I ask you to send your proposals for additional candidates for BoD mandates to the President (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) latest November 27th, 2020 so that we can finalize the list of candidates and distribute it to you.

Further, in 2020, the BoD coopted 2 members for the Committee of Appeal. Also, these candidates need to be confirmed (or replaced) by the AGM. Both are well-known by most of you, as they have served the Agency for a long time:

• Ray Hilditch
• Véronique Sournies.

Both are available for re-election, but also here, the AGM takes the final decision. Consequently, if you would like to propose additional candidates feel free to do so. May I ask you to send your proposals for additional candidates for the Committee of Appeal to the President (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) latest November 27th, 2020 so that we can finalize the list of candidates and distribute it to all of you.

I hope you understand the sense of urgency and that you will act accordingly.

Last, there is a vacancy in our Quality committee, and we will very much welcome your proposals as well. Candidates should represent a member institution.

On behalf of all the Board members I would like to thank you for your cooperation and wish you a good, virus-free academic year 2020/2021.

We will keep in touch.

Pavel Žufan
President

Brno, November 3rd, 2020