Report International DAAD/KoWi Conference “Reaching out beyond Europe" Brussels 22.-23.04.10
The conference was organized by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the EU Liason Office of German Research Organisations (KoWi) and hosted at the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria, a 18th century palais (very expensively refurbished) in the direct vicinity of the European Parliament. It started on Thursday at 2 pm with the welcome addresses of Wolfgang Heubisch, State Minister of Science, Research and the Arts of Bavaria, Susanne Burger, Head of Unit Higher Education and Research of the Permanent Representation of the FRG to the EU, and Jens-Peter Gaul, Director of the EU Liason Office of German Research Organisations. Heubisch highlighted the necessity to cope with the challenge of the international competition in the market of higher education and research, especially between the EU, USA and China. Programs like Erasmus Mundus, Tempus and Alfa try to meet this challenge. As an example he mentioned the Center for International Health of the LMU Munich, which invites international students to apply to their scholarships to receive internationally acknowledged certificates and academic titles. Burger assured that the German Government is very motivated to intensify the cooperation with international research institutions and to further support programs like Tempus and Erasmus Mundus. Gaul highlighted the fruitful cooperation between the DAAD and KoWi.
The first block of presentations featured Christian Bode, Secretary General of the DAAD, Sigi Gruber from the International Cooperation Department of DG Research, European Commission (who substituted Mary Minch, director of the before mentioned institution, who due to traffic problems kept stuck in Tokyo) and Aurora Iglesias, of the Unit E.3, Social and Human Development and Migration, EuropAid Cooperation Office, European Commission (who for her part substituted Helene Bourgade, head of the before mentioned institution, who broke her angle). Bode mainly presented the DAAD as an institution of academic exchange and its programs: DIES, Exceed, African Excellence (among others). He criticized European state-steered programs as too inflexible, proudly loben the autonomous evaluation procedures of the DAAD. He presented the main aims of the programs of his institution: - exchange of scientific know-how; - regional and intraregional cooperation; - intercultural understanding & good governance; - local capacity building. As one example he accentuated the support DAAD delivers to the international universities abroad which are joint-ventures with Germany (for example: German University in Cairo). Finally he criticizes the lack of cooperation between the EU and the DAAD. Sigi Gruber points out that global challenges need global programs of research cooperation. She presents the 7th Framework Programme (FP 7) of the EU for joint-venture and individual research projects, which is open to researchers of all over the world. Unfortunately, actually only 6% of them are from non-EU countries. In consequence, she demands that EU programmes should not be a European fortress. As an attempt of self-critique she admits that until now there exists no overview over the structure of research relations between countries. We do not know which activities combine Finland with India, Spain with the USA. Her institution is to be creating a strategic forum to fill this gap. Concerning the FP 7, she stresses the following conditions for a successful application: - reciprocity principle (EU- and non-EU-partners should have mutual access to provided funds); - go regional (all partners should share regional interests); - avoidance to treat partners like institutions in Brazil, India and China as representing developing countries, third world countries; - coherence of research policy and development policies. Iglesias presented the aims of her institution, which spends 600 Million Euros to education: - human development through education, i.e. improved access to basic education; - improvement of the quality of teaching methods and teaching materials; - coherence with economic needs in each cooperating country; - improvement of the capacity of training institutions in cooperating countries.
The second block of presentations featured Nina Salden, Head of Unit Tempus, Erasmus Mundus, EU-Third Country Cooperation, DAAD, and Victoria Llobet, Scientific Officer, KoWi. Salden starts her talk presenting the 2nd Erasmus Mundus programme (2009-2013) which has a budget of 1 Billion Euros and consists of three different actions: 1. Common European studying programmes with joint or double degree and management and scholarship funding. Third country participation is about 50% 2. Mobility networks between at least five European universities and at least one higher education institution from another region. 3. Other promotion and network projects. In continuation she presents the Tempus IV programme (2007-2013) which has its regional focus on Eastern Europe, Asia and Northern Africa. Its aim is the improvement of higher education in the partner countries. In a next step the Alfa III programme (cooperation between EU and Latin-American partners) is being introduced. It is designed to modernize and improve the quality of higher education in Latin-America. The partnership requirement is the incorporation of at least 2 to 4 EU partners and about 4 to 12 Latin-American institutions. Salden finally gives a rough presentation of the EduLink and ACP Science&Technology Programme for the African-Caribbean-Pacific Region which aims to support higher education management, teaching and curricular development and research&technology improvement in the region. Victoria Llobet presents us some details of the FP 7, according to her the world’s biggest international research programme and open to almost all countries. It is dedicated to universities, public&private research centers, the industry, and international organizations like NGO’s. All programmes require co-financing through external institutions. The following criteria have to be considered specifically: scientific-technological quality; project implementation and management; social and economic impact of the results; presentation of a realistic budget calculation; financial reliability of the partners.
At the end of the first day a reception presented the opportunity to establish contacts with the numerable participants, most of them from European universities.
The second day was dedicated to four workshops on different geographical regions: the ACP region, Asia, EU neighborhood area, Latin America. I decided to assist to the workshop aiming at the ACP region and Latin America. The first workshop featured a coordinator of an EduLink project on capacity building for integrated watershed and sanitation management, from the University of Siegen. Mr. Ruger Winnegge explained to us that the project started with a DAAD supported summer school in 2005 in Siegen, where many DAAD alumni came together to discuss a possible project on water supply in their corresponding countries. Subsequently they established a network which developed a project that deals with the problem to supply clean water in underdeveloped regions and to regulate water supply in regions with either too much or too little water. The project obliges each partner to a decentralized management, i.e. the local rural communities have to organize their own water and sanitation management. The task of the Siegen team is to identify the lacks and gaps in the realization of the project and establish links and relations between the foreign partners. Winnegge points out the necessity to improve the coordination between the different EU-programmes and the DAAD- programmes, to develop the capacity of academic administration to administer the different programmes with their specific financial rules. The second presentation of the workshop featured Daan Du Toit, Minister Counsellor of the Science and Technology Ministry of South Africa. He gave examples of the INCO NET Africa programme of FP 7, which supports projects of pan African and European networks. The examples aimed at the explanation of how to foster research cooperation with the ACP region. The main conditions are: - true partnership, i.e. reciprocal, shared priorities; - capacity building; - awareness of future opportunities for cooperation.
The second workshop concentrated on the EU – Latin American Cooperation in the development of higher education and research, mainly in the framework of the Alfa and Erasmus Mundus programmes. Sandra J. Toro Hoyos from the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Columbia, presented the programmes that this university has with other universities of the region and in the EU, mainly in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Germany and France. The programmes aim at the exchange of graduate and postgraduate students. One of the projects is located in the field of water supply and management, including universities in Guatemala and Costa Rica. Toro Hoyos points out the problems of cooperation work: lack of language skills, lack of regional cooperation, low mobility budget. Finally, Anthanasios Vafeidis from the University of Kiel, presented the so called “COMPASS”-project (Comparative Assessment of Costal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise at Continental Scale) that joins together Kiel with universities in Argentina, Greece, Brazil, and with NGO’s in Chile. The aim is to exchange local knowledge on costal research and policy relevant research. The problems consist in the slow and cumbersome realization of administrative procedures and the lacking facilities to host the guest scientists. As the main positive aspect Vafeidis highlights the brilliant perspectives on the individual and institutional level for the scientific exchange.
The conference closed with a panel discussion on future strategies for international cooperation in education and research, featuring the above mentioned Sigi Gruber and Susanne Burger, plus Jan Pakulski, Head of Unit A.5 of the DG Education and Culture of the European Commission, Yasser Elshayeb, Coordinator of EU programmes in higher education and research of the Ministry of Education and Research of Egypt, and Matthias Winkler, Director of the European Project Center of the TU Dresden. The discussion accentuated the necessity to establish more synergy effects between the two policy fields, but in fact added very little to the already discussed topics during the two days.
Slides under:
http://eu.daad.de/eu/drittlandkooperationen/veranstaltungen/12994.html