Butlletí

A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya

96

January 2020

EDITORIAL

What lies ahead in 2020?

Since I have been president of AQU Catalunya I have seen the Agency's activities grow in all areas year after year, and I have had the pleasure of seeing how the Agency's human resources, led by Dr. Martí Casadesús, have been able to address the challenges that it has had to face, including:

• The launch of the accreditation procedure for recognised programmes of study, integrated with the monitoring procedure (2014).
• The approval and implementation of two Strategic Plans, one for 2015-2019 and the current one for 2019-2022, which promote the new development of institutional review.
• The enactment of Act 15/2015, dealing with AQU Catalunya, which provided the Agency with a more flexible structure and reinforced compliance with European standards (ESG).
• The carrying out of two graduate employment outcomes survey studies of people who graduated three years previously (2014 and 2017) and the inclusion in the survey of schools delivering Arts higher education programmes.
• The carrying out of two survey studies of employers in relation to graduate employment outcomes (2015-2018).
• Impetus given to the satisfaction surveys of the recent graduate population (since 2015).

AQU NEWS

• Publication of the procedures and criteria for the assessment of teaching staff for 202030.12.2019
• New edition of the course on quality assurance in higher education for student representatives20.12.2019
• Meeting of the Standing Committee of AQU Catalunya's Governing Board11.12.2019
• Amendment of the criteria for teaching staff assessment in the Experimental Sciences and Life Sciences10.12.2019
• The profile of tenure-eligible lecturers04.12.2019
• AQU Catalunya launches the start of a new graduate satisfaction survey29.11.2019
• The Advisory Committee discusses the issue of gender in relation to the assessment of research, in addition to the structure of institutional accreditation28.11.2019
• New online procedure for submitting appeals25.11.2019
• Conclusions and proposals for improvement for university education in Biosciences22.11.2019
• The voice of students at AQU Catalunya, on the occasion of the International Students' Day15.11.2019
• The Catalan Higher Education Qualifications Framework, a new instrument for programme assessment and review14.11.2019
• More than 1,000 academics have already applied through the PRC for assessment in relation to six-year research quality premiums31.10.2019
• DORA and the Leiden Manifesto both run through the assessment of research by teaching staff undertaken by AQU Catalunya29.10.2019
• The EUC web portal at the ENQA General Assembly 21.10.2019
• Gender impact assessment by AQU Catalunya 10.10.2019

ARTICLES

• The profile of tenure-eligible lecturers
  What is the profile of tenure-eligible lecturers who successfully undergo assessment by the Agency? How old are they? How long ago did they obtain their doctorate? Have they spent periods of time undertaking research (research stays)? Do they publish in journals of quality? Are there any variations between the different fields of knowledge? The answers to these and other questions can be found in Profiles of tenure-eligible lecturers, a report recently published by AQU Catalunya that analyses the characteristics of individuals who obtained accreditation in the period from 2013 to 2017.
  Esteve Arboix - Head of Assessment of Teaching Staff and Research Department
• The accreditation of merits in research and gender
  AQU Catalunya has undertaken the assessment and accreditation of merits in research of teaching and research staff since 2011, with assessment being based on six-year periods of research. The assessment of six-year periods of research is non-mandatory and is associated, in the case of both regular and contract teaching staff at public universities, with supplementary earnings. The assessment of merits in research is undertaken by the various specific committees that come under AQU's Research Assessment Commission (CAR).
  Núria Mancho - Internationalisation and Knowledge Generation Department

OPINION

• Assessment and accreditation of tenure-eligible lecturers under the Serra Húnter Programme
  

  Josep Domingo
  Academic Director, Serra Húnter Programme

  The purpose of the Serra Húnter Programme (SHP) is to recruit, on a level comparable to that of international standards, highly qualified teaching and research staff for positions at public universities in Catalonia. The SHP followed the adoption of the Catalan Universities Act (LUC) in 2003 and, up until 2012, its scope was confined to the co-financing of 50% of the recruitment of senior lecturers accredited by the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU).
  
  From 2012 onwards, following the consolidation of the contract teaching positions covered by the LUC and the accreditation system extended to include regular (civil servant) teaching positions, the SHP was changed and took on its current form. In order to be co-financed by the SH programme, contracts must have a broad profile and calls for applications are tendered at international level to increase participation and competitiveness: calls currently receive around twenty applications to each contract tendered. In addition, the tenure committees (panels) that decide the outcome of calls are set up on an equal footing between the university tendering the contract and the SHP. The committees consist of five members, of which only the secretary is from the university offering the post, with two or three members from universities in other countries to ensure that international standards of selection are applied.

AQU RECOMMENDS

• 21st Report Occupational Condition of Graduates 2019 - Italy
• Abandono universitario: revisión del tipo, del cálculo y de su alcance
• Executive Summary?: Graduates entrepreneurship - Italy
• School-to-work pathways - Australia
• She figures 2018 - EU publications