Sjur Bergan

Dr Sjur Bergan is Head of the Department of Higher Education and History Teaching at the Council of Europe (Directorate of School, Out-of-School and Higher Education Directorate General IV – Education, Culture and Cultural Heritage, Youth and Sport).

He joined the Council of Europe in 1991 and has since been involved in most of the Council’s higher education activities, among other functions as secretary to the Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research (CDESR) and Council of Europe representative on the Bologna Follow Up Group and Board. Sjur Bergan was also a member of the Bologna working groups on qualifications frameworks and on the Bologna Process in the global context. He is responsible for the Council’s activities on recognition and mobility, including the establishment of a joint programme with UNESCO in this area and Co-Secretary of the ENIC Network. Before joining the Council of Europe, Sjur Bergan worked in the administration of the University of Oslo from 1983 until 1991. Sjur Bergan is the editor of Recognition Issues in the Bologna Process (2003), with Luc Weber of The Public Responsibility for Higher Education and Research (2005) and, with Nuria Sanz, of The Heritage of European Universities (2002).

Dr Kurt Biedenkopf was the Minister President of the Free State of Saxony between 1990 and 2002, his political career including positions such as chairman of the Federal Expert Commission of the German Federal Government (1968-70), secretary general of the Christian Democratic Union [CDU] (1973-77), deputy chairman of the CDU (1977-83) and member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia (1980-88). Since 1983 he has been a member of the board of the CDU and has served as a member of the German Bundestag from 1987 to 1990. Kurt Biedenkopf was educated in law; he received his Doctor of Law in Frankfurt/ Main, Germany in 1958 and his LL.M. at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA in 1962. He became assistant and then full professor (1963 and 1964 respectively) at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, the president of which he was between 1967 and 1969.

Kurt Biedenkopf has been a trustee of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin since May 2003 and later became the chairman of the board of trustees. Also in 2003 he became the president of the Dresden International University, to which he was appointed honorary president in 2006.

Dr Biedenkopf was awarded numerous honorary doctorates, for example from Davidson College, Davidson N.C., USA, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA, New School for Social Research, New York City, USA and from the Catholic University of Brussels, Belgium.

Christian Bode is the Secretary General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Vice-President of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). DAAD is the largest scholarship organisation globally, with more than 200 programmes out of and into Germany, and over 60,000 scholarships per year.  It also runs many initiatives to internationalise German higher education, and to increase its global attractiveness. Christian Bode was educated in law, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn in 1971. Between 1972 and 1982 he held different senior positions in the Federal Ministry of Education and Science.  From 1982 until 1990 he was the Secretary General of the German Rectors’ Conference (at the time: Westdeutsche Rektorenkonferenz). 

Christian Bode is one of the founders of the Academic Cooperation Association, of which he has been a Vice-President twice. He was awarded numerous honorary doctorates, for example from the University of Birmingham and the Technical University of Mongolia. He also holds the French title of a Chevalier de l’ Ordre National du Mérite.

Dr Robert John Coelen is Vice-President International at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has worked for about 12 years in the field of international education. He returned to work in Europe after an absence of 30 years. Most of these 30 years were spent in Australia: First as an international student, fresh out of the Netherlands, next as a researcher and academic, and finally as Director International at two universities in Queensland. About 10% of that time was spent in Indonesia on a large range of developmental projects.

Robert is a member of Club33, a global think tank on internationalisation, a member of the International Ranking Experts Group, which produced the Berlin Principles on Ranking in Higher Education, member of the Executive Board, Steering and Editorial Committees of the European Association of International Education. He has recently become a member of Advisory Boards on the EU Network of European Promotors and Transnational Education Projects within the context of the Erasmus Mundus Global Promotion.

Robert is a regular speaker at international and national conferences on issues related to internationalisation of higher education. In particular ranking, international positioning, the services to international students and admission are amongst the topics he addresses. He is also the organiser of the Leiden University Global Ranking Symposium Series. He is the initiator of Euroscholars, a new study abroad education project in collaboration with 12 continental LERU universities.

Robert is committed to the ideals of an internationalised higher education as the result of first-hand experience as an international student, followed by observing the development of his international students in undergraduate programs, as well as his international PhD students. The beneficial personal transformation that ensues from academic development in cultures other than one’s own is something he believes every student should experience at some time in their lives.

Currently Secretariat Director of the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), Dr Edilberto C. de Jesus obtained his M. Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Modern Southeast Asian History at Yale. He was a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 1977 and was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Michigan in 1985-86. 

He spent most of his academic career at the Asian Institute of Management, where he earned tenure as a full professor.  He assumed the post of Associate Dean for Research in 1992 and led a team that established the AIM Policy Forum, which he subsequently chaired.

He served in the Cabinet of President Corazon Aquino in 1987-92 as Presidential Adviser on Rural Development and Deputy Peace Commissioner.  He was the President of the Far Eastern University in Manila in 1995-2002.  He served as Secretary of Education from 2002-2004 in the first term of President Gloria Arroyo.  He was President of the SEAMEO Council in 2003.  He is a member of Asia Society’s International Council.

Eva Egron-Polak is the Secretary General , International Association of Universities (IAU). She was educated in the Czech Republic, Canada and France.  Having studied French Literature, Political Science and International Political Economy, her post-graduate research focused on higher education policy and particularly on early (mid-1980s) policy making in this field by the European Union.  She has had extensive experience in international cooperation in higher education having served for more than 15 year in various senior positions at the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) prior to becoming the Secretary General of IAU in 2002.  Her last position at AUCC before moving to IAU was as Vice-President, International. 

As Secretary General of IAU, an independent global association of universities and associations of higher education institutions, she is engaged with some of the most pressing policy issues in higher education – internationalization of higher education and intercultural learning, quality of cross-border higher education, access to and success in higher education, changing nature of institutional autonomy and the contribution of higher education to sustainable development among others.  Since her arrival at IAU, she has focused on expanding the Association’s convening role, consolidating the Association’s clearing house of information capacities and launched a number of projects, including a systematic and regular global survey of trends in internationalization. 

IAU is based at UNESCO in Paris and collaborates with many international organizations interested in higher education and research. 

Professor Yehuda Elkana was born in Yugoslavia in 1934, and after the war and a year in concentration camps he immigrated to Israel in 1948. He studied physics, mathematics and history of science, also taking courses in biology, and received an M.Sc. degree. In 1968, he completed his doctoral studies at Brandeis University with a thesis “On the Emergence of the Energy Concept,” published later by Harvard University Press. For one year, he taught at Harvard University. From 1968 he taught in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University and served as its Chairman. He was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1973-74) a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford (1977-78); from 1981 until 1991 he was Director of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. From 1968 to 1993 he was Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. In 1988-89 he was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and since 1987 a Permanent Fellow there. From 1992-1999 he was a Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Collegium Budapest, and its Deputy Chairman; Yehuda Elkana is a corresponding member of the International Academy for the History of Science.

Professor Elkana is co-founder and editor of Science in Context and author of several books and numerous articles. From 1995 to 1999 he was Professor for the Philosophy of Science at the ETH Zurich. In April 1997 he became a Member of the Scientific Board of the Collegium Helveticum. In 2001 he was elected to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Since 1999 Yehuda Elkana has been the President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest. He is married to Dr Yehudit Elkana and has four children.

Dr Goodman is the sixth President of Institute of International Education (IIE), the leading US not-for-profit organization in the field of international educational exchange. IIE administers the Fulbright program, sponsored by the United States Department of State, and 250 other corporate, government and privately-sponsored programs. It also publishes the Open Doors report, on international students in the US.

Previously, he was Executive Dean of the School of Foreign Service and Professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of books on international affairs published by Harvard, Princeton and Yale University Presses and Diversity in Governance, published by the American Council on Education. Dr Goodman also served as Presidential Briefing Coordinator for the Director of Central Intelligence and as Special Assistant to the Director of the National Foreign Assessment Center in the Carter Administration. He was the first American professor to lecture at the Foreign Affairs College of Beijing. Dr. Goodman also helped create the first US academic exchange program with the Moscow Diplomatic Academy for the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs and developed the diplomatic training program of the Foreign Ministry of Vietnam. Dr Goodman has also served as a consultant to Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the United States Information Agency, and IBM. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the selection committee for the Pickering Fellowships at the Department of State, and as a jury member for the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE) Program.  In 2006 he was appointed as an external adviser of the European Commission.

Dr Goodman has a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard, an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a B.S. from Northwestern University. He has been awarded honorary doctor of laws from Mount Ida and Ramapo Colleges, an honorary doctor of humane letters from SUNY-Purchase, and has received awards from Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts universities. Dr Goodman also holds an honorary doctorate from Toyota University.

Rolf Hoffmann is Executive Director of the German-American Fulbright Commission in Berlin. He has been in this position since 2004.

Born in Cologne, Germany, Rolf Hoffmann studied biological sciences at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA, and the University of Tübingen in Germany where he was awarded a doctoral degree in 1983. After two years as an assistant professor in zoology at the University of Karlsruhe he joined the policy division of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn and later became Deputy Director of their selection division and the Feodor-Lynen Program. In 1990, he joined the newly created German Space Agency (DARA) as head of the international science and business relations policy office.

Since 1991 he worked mainly for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Bonn, first as Programme Director (for North American and European programs), then as Director of the DAAD North America office in New York, with an interim (1999-2000) as Director of the German-American Academic Council in Bonn and Washington, D.C. In 2001, Rolf Hoffmann was appointed Director of DAAD’s new International Marketing Initiative, which combines GATE-Germany (the German Higher Education Institution’s marketing consortium) and the official Secretariat of the German Government’s Joint Initiative for the International Promotion of Study and Research in Germany.

Elmar Hönekopp is a senior researcher at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany, presiding over the research department for International Comparisons and European Integration and leading the research field “Migration and Integration”.

Some of his selected areas of research comprise EU Eastern enlargement and its effects on employment and labour markets in EU member countries, analogical developments in Eastern European transition countries as well as international labour migration. Current research activities deal with the economic and labour market developments in German/Czech and German/Polish border areas, the migration of highly qualified workers in a European context and the long-term labour demand/ immigration regime in Germany.

Elmar Hönekopp studied economics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he has been a research assistant since 1975.

Dr Annette Julius is the Head of the Berlin Office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She studied English and Russian Language and Literature at the University of Cologne, the University of Dundee in Scotland und the Pushkine Institute of Russian Language in Moscow. From 1992 to 1995 Annette Julius did a PhD in Slavonic Studies, with several research stays in Moscow. After completing her PhD, she worked six years for the Catholic German scholarship foundation Cusanuswerk.

In 2001, Annette Julius joined the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD in Bonn, where she was first the Head of Section for “Policy Planning and Coordination” and in 2005 became the Head of Division for “Strategy and Cross-Sectional Programmes”. In November she took up her current position as Head of the DAAD Berlin Office, which consists of the Liaison Office “Education and Research” and the “Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme” (BKP).

Professor Sijbolt Noorda is currently the President of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands and teaches cultural history of religion and bible at the University of Amsterdam. Until 2006, he was the President of this university. He is a graduate of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Universiteit Utrecht and Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University New York.

Professor Noorda served and continues to serve on various boards of institutions for health care, public broadcasting, fine arts and culture, information technology and publishing, and university quality assessment.

In Germany he is a member of the Stiftungsrat Evaluations-Agentur Baden-Württemberg and the International Advisory Board of the Freie Universität Berlin. He is also a representative of the Netherlands on the Council of the European University Association.

Mikko Nupponen is currently Assistant Director in Finland’s Centre for International Mobility (CIMO). His responsibilities cover the coordination of EU programmes, such as the Lifelong Learning Programme, Youth in Action and Culture.Mikko Nupponen has a long experience in EU Education and Training programmes, both at national level as Director of the Finnish National Agency, as well as at European level, where he has worked as Deputy Director in the Socrates, Leonardo and Youth Technical Assistance Office.<//span>

In 2006 Mikko Nupponen worked in the Finnish Education Ministry, on issues related to the Finnish EU Council Presidency. His main tasks were the drafting of the “Helsinki Communiqué on Enhanced European Cooperation in Vocational Education and Training” and the organisation of the Helsinki Ministerial Meeting in December 2006.  

Dr Frieder Meyer-Krahmer has been the State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany since 2005. He is also the chairman of the board of trustees of the WZB (social science research centre From 1990 to 2005 he was the head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the chairman of the scientific-technical board of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.

A student of mathematics, economics and political science in Heidelberg, Bonn and Frankfurt, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt in 1979. In 1989 he obtained professorial qualification at the University of Stuttgart and then moved on to be a professor of economics with focus on Innovation Economics at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France in 1995. Mr Meyer-Krahmer also holds the French title of aChevalier de l’ Ordre National du Mérite.

Anthony Pollock is one of the most respected and experienced figures in Australian international education, having been a leading contributor to the development of the A$10 billion a year industry for nearly two decades.

Mr Pollock is currently chief executive of IDP Education Pty Ltd, the largest recruiter of international students for Australian institutions which also delivers IELTS, one of the world’s top English language tests, around the globe.

He recently led the IDP equity raising process which resulted in SEEK Ltd, Australia’s largest online job search company, becoming a 50 per cent shareholder of IDP. The other 50 per cent of IDP equity is held by Australian universities.

Mr Pollock has been Chief Executive of IDP since May 2005. Previously he was Vice-President International of Monash University.

Tim Rogers is the former Head of Student Recruitment & Admissions at the London School of Economics & Political Science.  He was previously Senior International Liaison Officer at the University of Warwick.  With over 14 years of experience in international student recruitment, university administration and management, educational marketing and press relations, Tim is regarded as one of the leading international education consultants in the world today.

Since establishing his own educational consultancy, International Education Consultants UK, in May 2003, Tim has developed an impressive client list that includes Ministries of Education in Denmark, India, Finland, Sweden and The Netherlands; institutions, including LSE, Imperial College London, the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), Aarhus School of Business, Abertay University, Maastricht University, the Helsinki Education and Research Area, the American University in Paris, the University of Reading and the University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg; and associations and companies, including Hobsons UK, Quacquarelli Symonds, the company behind the QS World Grad School Tour and the World University Rankings, NAFSA, ACA and the European Association of International Education (EAIE).  His most recent work for the Danish Ministry of Education has resulted in a comprehensive re-evaluation of the processes of internationalisation and student recruitment in Denmark by the Danish Government.

Tim’s areas of expertise include institutional strategic development of international student recruitment strategies, the development of study abroad programmes, the implementation of student recruitment programmes, the importance of brand building in the international education market, international league tables and the impact of ranking initiatives and commentary on all aspects of the internationalisation of education and student populations around the world, particularly the impact on tuition fees and the Bologna Process.  His views are published widely around the world, including national and local newspapers and magazines and he has recently co-authored the most recent EAIE Occasional Paper on the Impact of Tuition Fees in International Student Recruitment.

Peter Scott is Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University and President of the Academic Cooperation Association. Prior to this he was Pro Vice-Chancellor for External Affairs at the University of Leeds, as well as a Professor of Education and the Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in Education. Before going to Leeds in 1992, he was for sixteen years Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Peter Scott was educated at the University of Oxford and at the University of California at Berkeley. He has honorary doctorates from the University of Bath, UMIST, the (former) Council for National Academic Awards, Anglia Polytechnic University and Grand Valley State University. He is also a Member of the Academia Europea and of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. In December 2006, Peter Scott was knighted in recognition of his contribution to higher education both in the UK and at the international level..

His research interests are the governance and management of universities and colleges, non-standard access to higher education and the links between further and higher education. Among his publications are The Meanings of Mass Higher Education (1995), Governing Universities (1996), The Globalization of Higher Education (1998) and Higher Education Re-formed (2000), University Leadership: The Role of the Chief Executive (2000), Ten Years On: Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe (2000) and Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge Production in an Age of Uncertainties (2001).

Hanneke Teekens is Director Communication at Nuffic, the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education. Earlier, she held positions at the Hogeschool and University of Amsterdam, and the University of Twente. She has worked as a teacher, advisor and consultant in various countries and international projects. Hanneke Teekens was, until recently, the director of the Socrates National Agency in the Netherlands and she is currently heading the national structure for Erasmus Mundus. She is the chairwoman of the board of ASIE, a consortium of international organizations, which promotes and encourages international education and academic mobility and publishes the Journal of Studies in International Education. She has a special interest in developments concerning Internationalisation at Home (IaH). Hanneke Teekens has contributed to various books and articles and is a frequent speaker at international conferences and seminars.

Dr Maurits van Rooijen started his academic career (in green town planning) at his alma mater, Utrecht University, before moving mid-80s to the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is one of the first generation to get involved in the strategic ‘internationalisation’ of universities. In 1993 he moved to the University of Westminster, London, originally as Director of International Education, now as Vice-President for International and Institutional Development, an executive board position. At the same time, from 1999 to 2005, he held a similar position at Leiden University on a part-time secondment. In 1998, during a sabbatical from Westminster, he was also acting vice-president (international) at Victoria University Melbourne.

Dr van Rooijen is involved in a substantial number of international organisations: He is Vice-President of the Compostela Group of Universities, Vice-President of the European Access Network (for widening participating to higher education), and non-executive director of WACE (for work-integrated learning), amongst others.

Bernd Wächter is the Director of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). In this capacity, which he has held since 1998, he bears overall responsibility for the implementation of all ACA policy.

Earlier on (1995 – 1997), he was the Head of the Erasmus Department in the then Socrates and Youth TAO, which implemented the centralised parts of the Erasmus Programme on behalf of the European Commission. Between 1992 and 1995, he headed the German national agency for the Erasmus Programme inside the DAAD, which also had important national information functions for the COMETT, LINGUA and TEMPUS schemes. His experience with internationalisation also relates to the institutional level, through his functions as head of the international office of the Fachhochschule Darmstadt, and as a departmental coordinator of international relations at the Gesamthochschule Kassel. He has also worked for the British Council.

Bernd Wächter has published and lectured widely on issues of Europeanisation and internationalisation of higher education. He is the editor of the ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education.

Dr John Yopp is Associate Provost for Educational Partnerships and International Affairs and Director of the Appalachian Mathematics and Science Partnership at the University of Kentucky.  He is a member of NAFSA’s International Task Force on the Bologna Process and on the Board of Directors of the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE).  One of his major interests is the impact of the Bologna Process on U.S. and international graduate education.  He has worked closely with the EAIE and other European associations on the Bologna Process since 2000.

Dr John Yopp was Vice President for Graduate and Professional Education at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) from 1997 to 2003 and Vice President for Strategic Higher Education Initiatives from 2003-2004.  In addition, he was a Senior Visiting Scholar at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and a Senior Scholar in Residence at the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington D.C. In these latter two positions he worked with the late Senator Paul Simon, as Project Director, to create, through legislation, a Congressional Commission to study the establishment of the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship Program for Study Abroad.  His committee of high level representatives from the major international educational associations (e.g. IIE, NAFSA, Alliance) produced the Commission’s briefing book.

He served as Associate ViceCchancellor for Academic Affairs and Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) since 1986.  He was also a professor of Plant Physiology at the Illinois University for 27 years.

He also served as chair of the Council on Research Policy and Graduate Education and as a member of the executive committee of the Commission on International Affairs for The National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.  He was a member of the Board of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and of the executive committee of Graduate Deans for the African-American Institute.  He serves or has served as a member or chair on numerous state and national boards and committees concerned with international educational issues over the past 25 years.

Dr John Yopp received his B.S. in Biology from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Louisville.  He was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow in biochemical adaptation to extreme environments at NASA’s Ames Research Center before joining SIUC in 1970.