Board

The Board is in charge of the overall governance and management of EQAR, including administrative, financial matters and strategic coordination, with the support of the Secretariat.

Nominations and Terms of Office

The Board comprises of five members: the President of EQAR and one from each Founding Member. Additionally, following the statutory revision of 2023 two governmental observers are appointed to the Board.

The Board is confirmed by the General Assembly for a two-year mandate. It designates, one Vice-President and a Treasurer from among its members. The Board has agreed to bi-annually rotate these functions amongst its members.

The President of the Board legally represents the EQAR association.

The Board convenes four to five times annually, normally at the EQAR office in Brussels or in conjunction with other meetings.

Composition

The President of EQAR, elected by the General Assembly for a three-year period, chairs the Board.

Stéphane Lauwick (President)

Former Secretary-General of the French network of University Institutes of Technology, ADIUT.

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In that capacity, he promoted the French Institutes of Technology, mainly outside Europe and worked with a variety of stakeholders.

Stéphane Lauwick has extensive experience not only in the French higher education sector, at the University Institute of Technology (IUT) in Le Havre, but also at a European level, as former President of EURASHE.

Stéphane was elected as President of EQAR at the General Assembly in Stockholm, in May 2023. He can be reached via the following email: stephane.lauwick@eqar.eu.

 

The other Board members have a 2-year mandate. The mandate of the current Board will finish after the General Assembly of 2024.

Goran Daković (Vice-President)

Goran Dakovic is a Reviews Manager at ENQA,

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(the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education), where he manages the external reviews of quality assurance agencies against the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area.

Prior to this position, he worked as a Policy and Project Officer for the Institutional Development Unit at the European University Association (EUA), where he focused on areas such as quality assurance, learning and teaching, and recognition of qualifications and of prior learning. Moreover, he engaged in the EUA Institutional Evaluation Programme’s coordinated evaluations that are initiated at the joint request of institutions and public authorities.

Goran has been active in the higher education field since 2008, including holding a position of the head of the research unit in one of Slovenian higher education institutions, and participating as an external assessor in the HR Excellence in Research Award by the European Commission. Goran holds a master’s degree in Public Policies from the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

Jakub Grodecki (Treasurer)

Jakub Grodecki is Policy & Project Manager at EURASHE

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(the European association that represents institutions offering applied/professional higher education)

Jakub was previously Vice-President of the European Students’ Union (ESU), where he helped develop the organisation’s advocacy and built its capacity in the area of Quality of Higher Education, Students’ Participation in HE Governance, Bologna Process, and the developments of the European Education Area. In this capacity Jakub already served one year on the EQAR Executive Board.

Jakub has a Master Degree in Engineering/Industrial Management and a Bachelor Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

 

Maria Kelo

Maria Kelo is director of the Institutional Development Unit (EUA),

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which focuses on issues related to higher education learning and teaching, recognition and quality assurance. She is also a member of the Swiss Accreditation Council.

Before joining EUA in January 2022, Maria was for over a decade the Director of ENQA, the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher as well as member of the EQAR Executive Board in 2013-2020. She took part in European policy making processes within the Bologna Process and through cooperation with the European Commission.

Prior to joining ENQA, Maria worked for nine years in the field of international higher education in different European organisations and as a private consultant and has gained significant experiences on issues such as quality assurance, international higher education, and higher education reform.

Maria is a graduate of University College London and the London School of Economics.

Horia Onita

Horia Onița is President of the European Students’ Union (ESU)

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Horia serves as President of ESU, working in the organisation on overarching political priorities (Bologna Process, European elections etc), quality assurance of education, learning and teaching policies, digitalisation and social dimension of higher education.

He represents ESU in positions such as as co-chair of the Drafting Committee of 2024 Tirana Communique, co-chair of the Bologna Follow-Up group on Social Dimension and member of European Quality Assurance Register Board and BFUG Board.

He also follows EU developments on education funding and monitoring through National Recovery and Resilience Plans and the European Semester and has been representing ESU in the Steering Committee on Education of Council of Europe.
Horia holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Public Procurement degree from the University of Bucharest.

Governmental observers to the Board

Following the statutory revision of 2023, the GA appointed two governmental observers to the Board:

  • France – Mathieu Musquin
  • Norway – Tone Flood Strøm

Observers are elected by the General Assembly for a two-year mandate.

The two governmental observers attend the meetings of the Board. While the observers do not have voting rights, they may ask questions on the proceedings and will be invited to offer their feedback during general discussions.