A bimonthly publication of AQU Catalunya

46

January 2010

AQU Catalunya has accepted the request by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) to collaborate in the design and implementation of an external review process of the university’s International Relations. This will involve following the objectives that were established in the Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education (Leuven-Louvain, 28-29 April 2009), namely, for European higher education institutions to internationalise their activities and promote academic mobility (students, trainee researchers, teachers, etc.). Moreover, the Agency considers that this joint experience may well serve as a pilot scheme to facilitate a possible core review process of this dimension in Catalan universities as a whole at some point in the future.

The Catalan quality assurance agency will also use this initiative as an opportunity to further internationalise the review process itself, which will be carried out mainly in two ways. Firstly, through the use of a methodology designed by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education and applied in all Swedish universities in 2004 and 2008, and secondly with the proposal by AQU to appoint an external review team with international experts to carry out the evaluation process in situ.

The members on the international panel proposed by AQU for the review are Isabel Martins, Vice-rector of the Universidade de Aveiro, Gunnar Enquist, Project Manager at the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, Magda Staniewicz, student representative with a degree in Political Science from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznañ and currently taking a Master’s research degree in Sociology at the University of Barcelona, and Carme Edo, a quality expert with AQU Catalunya.

AQU Catalunya is collaborating with this external review team in both the preparation and the methodological development of the external review. At the end of the review, a report will be published, explaining the lessons learned throughout the process.