SARUD interim conference [08.07.17]
SARUD partners met in Astana on the 3-5th of July
The event was attended by more than 50 participants represented SARUD partners from Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, including the universities elaborating the master´s program and non-academic organizations.
The event started with the welcoming word of the host university (Kazakh agro-technical university) and SARUD project coordinator Prof. Dr. Martin Dieterich (University of Hohenheim).
The conference agenda consisted of two major parts, namely the joint meetings attended by all participants and several parallel internal thematic sessions. The key notes were held on rural development and sustainability including the need for teaching the respective topics, specifically the elaboration of education programs that would assure mobility and flexible response of education system on demands of agricultural economics. There were presented the results of the internal project evaluation based on the online-survey conducted in spring 2017 among project partners vs the recent external evaluation performed by EACEA and National Erasmus+ Offices. Furthermore the range of project activities and current achievements were presented, in particular the new SARUD master´s program curricula to be launched in fall 2017 in Russia and Kazakhstan. With regard to the latter, a closer look of the joint meetings was also taken to the student-centered and practice-oriented teaching methods and formats of the state graduation examination as well as topics for the graduation thesis. In addition to this, the dispute was focused on specific equipment required for teaching. During the internal meetings the academic representatives discussed and clarified specific issues with the colleagues from other universities and involvement of the practice partners in the master´s programs, as well as got the feedback from the SARUD coordinators.
In the scope of the thematic internal sessions, a precise attention was paid to the quality control, academic mobility, management and financial issues of the project.
The 4th Steering Committee Meeting, which also took place in the frame of the conference, was dedicated to the issues of the quality control of project implementation and dissemination of project results. The Steering Committee decided on the upcoming project events and respective time frames and especially paid attention to consider recommendation of the project monitoring and external evaluation.
The conference´s participants had also an opportunity to attend the international exhibition EXPO, which took place this year, from June until September, in Astana and was devoted to future energy issues.
