NEWS

The meeting of the ERASMUS+ CBHE project SQUARE – Strengthening the QUAlity and RElevance of the 3rd mission in Georgian Universities was held in Batumi, Batumi State University on July 5-7. The project is implemented by eight Georgian and three European universities, European Foundation for Management Development – EFMD, Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and LEPL – National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement. For three days, Georgian and foreign experts discussed the role of the university in community development, institution building, quality assurance and challenges.
The project aims to improve the importance and quality of the third mission in Georgian higher education institutions with the involvement of top management and structural units. Provide methodologies and guidelines for higher education institutions to plan, implement and evaluate their third mission.

It is important to underline that the ultimate goal of the project is to establish a regulatory document on the basis of which the role of the third mission is defined at the national level as a mandatory component of accreditation-authorization.
Within the framework of the project Georgian Universities, in cooperation with international partners, will develop methodologies and guidelines for the planning, implementation and evaluation of the third mission, and will develop a strategy of the third mission.

The Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement will update the quality assurance system and further integrate the evaluation of the activities of the third mission into quality assurance standards.

First two days of the meeting was allocated to the training and the third day was dedicated to the management of the project. Training was delivered by the European Partners – CNAM (France) and UTU (Finland). Part of the European partners participated in the meeting physically, while the representatives of University of Turku and UNL (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal) were attending the meeting online.

At each project consortium member university, a strategic plan for the third mission will be developed and one project for the third mission will be piloted. This ensures the introduction and development of the third mission at the institutional level.

Project details and webpage: http://www.square.tsu.ge/

2021