At its 1 December meeting in Brussels, ACA’s General Assembly dealt with a particularly important matter for the Association – the election of a new President. As a result, ACA is pleased and proud to announce that Sijbolt Noorda is the new President of ACA. He is the fifth individual to serve in this role since ACA’s founding in 1993 and the first from the Netherlands. Sijbolt Noorda brings an impressive and highly relevant background to the ACA presidency. He currently holds the position of President of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands and is also the chairperson of the Dutch Foundation for Education.  Until 2006, he was President of the University of Amsterdam. Sijbolt Noorda is a former board member of the European University Association (EUA) and is a current member of Germany’s Akkreditierungsrat. ACA is thrilled to have him at the helm for the next three years.

The President will be assisted in his work by a new ACA Vice President and a new Treasurer. Taking up these roles as of this month are, respectively, Ulrich Grothus, Deputy Secretary-General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Hubert Dürrstein, CEO of ACA’s Austrian member, OeAD. We look forward to working closely with these long-time ACA supporters.

As we welcome the instalment of a new executive team, we express our most heartfelt thanks to outgoing ACA President Rolf Tarrach, whose outstanding leadership and thoughtful guidance were greatly appreciated throughout his tenure. We wish Rolf Tarrach every success in his future endeavours, and look forward to developing new avenues of cooperation with him.  We are also exceeding grateful to our outgoing Vice President, Rait Toompere (Chairman of the Board of ACA’s Estonian member, the Archimedes Foundation), as well as immediate past Treasurer, Ulf Melin (General Director of the International Programme Office for Education and Training, IPK) in Sweden.