The staff of the ACA Secretariat and of ACA members had a head start into 2019. Amongst the ‘many balls in the air’ were also conference participations in San Francisco and Coimbra.

ACA Director Bernd Wächter participated in the 2019 Annual Conference of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), which this year was held in San Francisco from 20 through 23 January. The event, attended by about 800 “senior internationalisation officers”, provided a good opportunity to network and renew old and make new contacts with North American higher education organisations and institutions. Bernd Wächter chaired a session on the opportunities for transatlantic cooperation likely to arise from the next edition of the Erasmus Programme (2021-2027), in which ACA board member and head of the Czech DZS, Dana Petrova as well as Sabine Pendl, EAIE President (University of Graz) and ACA friend of long standing, were awe-inspiring speakers. The session, which drew quite a crowd, was lively and highly interactive.

ACA Policy Officer, Marija Mitic attended staff training of the Coimbra Group, hosted by the University of Coimbra on 21-22 January, titled "Recognition of Refugees’ Qualifications: looking for International consensus". Representatives of some 40 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe came together to share experiences and show examples of good practice in supporting persons with refugee background pursue their studies or academic careers in their host countries.

Amongst the invited speakers, ACA’s contribution to the exchange was to share good practices and cooperation opportunities within the framework of its two ongoing projects supporting the integration of highly skilled refugees – GREET and CARe, both of which are run together with ACA’s members DAAD and EDUFI (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, December 2018). Within the GREET project three thematic webinars will be delivered in February-March for HEIs and the wider higher education community. Dates will be announced soon on the ACA website and in the Newsletter.

More about the staff training can be found here

More about GREET can be found here