Message of the President, May 20th, 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,  

Again, a lot happened in the period since the previous letter, and all of us have continued to learn to cope with the new situation. For ECBE, this included 3 General Meetings (GM), organized online (December, February, and April), and one “formal” GM (also in April), confirming the adjustment of the Statutes.

Probably, your key point of interest is the result of ENQA’s evaluation of ECBE. Even though it was done in October 2020, we still have no result. I do not want to go into details, but the delay was caused by internal issues on the part of ENQA, which are now being addressed, and we are hoping for a (positive) decision by June. We certainly will keep you informed on further developments.
Another key point of consideration is our Conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM), which we decided to move to September, hoping for a chance to meet in person. However, to remove any uncertainty, we are now announcing the 2021 Annual Conference and the AGM on September 16th-18th in an online format. Beginning of July, if the situation has improved, and we are allowed to meet in person, we will enable on-site participation in Paris. In this case, the Conference will be in a blended format, and you will have the possibility to upgrade your registration.
So, please already fix the September dates and actively participate in the Conference. We are announcing the publication of the conference proceedings, and we will try to get it registered in the Web of Science database; this means your papers will go through a peer-review process. We trust to get a lot of high quality inputs from you.

The topic for the Conference is “25 years of ECBE: Searching for Excellence in Business Education” and for the pre-conference 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 “excellent material” to be discussed and a vast amount of experience to be exchanged amongst 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 host and supervisor of the Conference, about the title of the paper you would like to present.
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 Board of Directors (BoD) is:

• President: Pavel Žufan (co-opted by the BoD in February 2021)
• 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)
• Martin Janacek, representative of employers (co-opted by the BoD in February 2021 until the next AGM)
• Matthew Kitching as a student representative (co-opted after the change of Statutes in April 2021 until the next AGM).

As you can see, we have a “complete” election of the BoD at the upcoming AGM. We do hope we will reach the quorum to be able to vote on the candidates for BoD and Committee of Appeal (CoA).
Consequently, I ask you to send your proposals for candidates for the BoD to the President (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) latest July 23rd, 2021 so that we can finalize the list of candidates and distribute it to you, together with the invitation for the AGM by the beginning of August. The proposals can also include candidates for the Committee of Appeal. The BoD recently co-opted Ray Hilditch and Veronique Sournies until the next AGM, and there is still one vacancy; all three members must be (re-)appointed by the upcoming AGM.

Further, we have some vacancies in other bodies:

• Quality committee: 2 vacancies.
• Advisory board: 4 vacancies: 2 representatives of employers, 1 representative of students, and 1 representative of another quality assurance agency.

Members of these bodies are appointed by the BoD (so they are not a part of elections during the AGM) but your proposals are more than welcome.

More information about ECBE’s Management Chart, and officers appointed, can be found online: Organization (ecbe.eu)

I hope you do understand the sense of urgency and will act accordingly.
On behalf of all the BoD members I would like to thank you for your cooperation and wish you a smooth and successful finalization of the academic year 2020/2021.

We will keep in touch.
And, hopefully, we will meet in Paris!!

Pavel Žufan
President

Brno, May 20th, 2021