Executive Board
The Executive Board is in charge of the daily operation of EQAR, with the support of the Secretariat. It takes care of all administrative affairs and has the power to legally represent the EQAR Association.
The Executive Board comprises four persons: a President, two Vice-presidents and a Treasurer. The Executive Board is elected by the General Assembly for a two-year mandate, whereas each Founding Member proposes one member of the Executive Board. The Executive Board has agreed to annually rotate the different functions amongst its members.
The mandate of the current Executive Board will finish after the General Assembly of 2014. As of 1 April 2012, the Executive Board assumes the following functions, according to the agreed annual rotation:
Maria Kelo
Maria Kelo is Director of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). Together with the Association’s President she represents ENQA in the E4 group and in the Bologna Follow-Up Group.
Prior to joining ENQA in 2011, Maria worked for nine years in the field of international higher education, first as a trainee at the European Commission DG for Education and Culture, and subsequently as a research assistant at Eurydice (2003), Senior Officer at the Academic Cooperation Association (2003-2009), Programme manager at EUA (2010), and as independent consultant (2010-2011).
During these years Maria carried out a number of project and studies on international higher education, in particular in the fields of transnational education, student mobility, student services, promotion of European higher education, and human resource management in higher education. Maria is a graduate of University College London (1996-2000) and London School of Economics (2001-2002).
Lesley Wilson
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Since 2002 Lesley Wilson has been Secretary General of the European University Association (EUA) that represents 34 national Rectors Conferences and almost 800 universities at European level. As part of her responsibilities she represents EUA in the E4 Group on quality assurance.
Prior to joining EUA she held a number of senior posts in different international organisations dealing with education and research in Europe, including: Head of Department for Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at the European Training Foundation (Turin, Italy) from 1999 -2001; Director of UNESCO’s European Centre for Higher Education (CEPES) in Bucharest from 1995 - 1999; Head of the Science Policy Unit of the European Science Foundation (ESF) in Strasbourg (France) from 1994 to 1995 and Director of the European Commission's TEMPUS Office (Brussels) from 1989 to 1994.
She began her career as a Scientific Officer at the German Science Council (Cologne) in 1980 and moved to Brussels in 1988 to take up a post as Senior Programme Manager in the ERASMUS Bureau (Brussels).
Lesley Wilson is a graduate of the Universities of Glasgow (1973-1978) and Strasbourg (1978-1980).
Allan Päll
Allan Päll studied political science in University of Tartu in Estonia. He is the Chairperson of the European Students' Union (ESU) from July 2011 to June 2012, having been Vice-Chairperson before that. He has previously in 2007-09 led social policy and student financing policy and research in the Federation of Estonian Student Unions (EÜL) and has also been closely involved in the EUROSTUDENT project in Estonia.
Within ESU, he has been coordinating the work of ESU on EU policies and Quality Assurance and has been leading ESU's project "Quest for Quality for Students" which looks into information provision and aims to build a quality concept from the students' perspective. He has also been coordinating the ESU student pool for quality assurance and has been representing ESU within the E4 Group, including involvement in the European Quality Assurance Forum and the MAP-ESG project.
Stefan Delplace
Stefan Delplace became the Secretary General of EURASHE (European Association of Institutions in Higher Education) in 2004, which he represents in the Bologna Follow up Group and several of its working and coordination groups. He is also the representative of EURASHE in the ‘E4’ Group, and has been involved, on behalf of EURASHE, in numerous Advisory Boards and Stakeholders consultative groups, such as the construction of the Integrated Lifelong Learning Programme, the reform of the Jean Monnet programme, the Assessment of the Education-Enterprise dialogue run by the European Commission, and the VET-HE Reference Group of the European Training Foundation.
Stefan Delplace studied Commercial Sciences (BA), is a graduate of the University of Ghent (MA Linguistics), and spent some time teaching (in-service training for companies, continuous education). He has run an international office of a University College for over 15 years, before specializing in policy towards and activities with partner countries of the EU (Tempus-TACIS & MEDA). In his own country (Belgium) he is the Chair of the Jury of the Prince Philippe Fund, for inter-community dialogue and cooperation between the HEIs of the Flemish and French-speaking Communities.
