Projects

The TRANS-EUROPEAN MOBILITY PROGRAM FOR UNIVERSITY STUDIES (TEMPUS)
TEMPUS (The Trans-European mobility scheme for university studies) supports the modernization of higher education and creates an area of co-operation in countries surrounding the EU. Established in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the scheme now covers 27 countries in the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

Tempus finances two types of actions:

1. Joint Projects are based on multilateral partnerships between higher education institutions in the EU and the partner countries. They can develop, modernize and disseminate new curricula, teaching methods or materials, boost a quality assurance culture, and modernize the management and governance of higher education institutions.
2. Structural Measures contribute to the development and reform of higher education institutions and systems in partner countries, to enhance their quality and relevance, and increase their convergence with EU developments. Partnerships are made up of consortia of organizations including higher education institutions, businesses, ministries, NGOs, and other organizations working in higher education; both from the EU and partner countries.

Completed Projects:

BIRD: Benchmarking International Relations Offices for Development
M.U.B.S.; jointly with the American University of Beirut (AUB), has been awarded on July 4th 2005 an EU project (TEMPUS Structural and Complementary Measures project). The European partners of the project are University of Saarland (Germany) and University of Alicante (Spain). The BIRD Project (Benchmarking International Relations Offices for Development) is a project funding by the European Commission in the framework of the TEMPUS MEDA program. The duration of this project is 12 months (October 2005-October 2006) and its main aim is to disseminate good practices in benchmarking analysis applied to university international relations in order to identify areas for change, and assists in setting targets for improvement.

QAHEL: Quality Assurance for Higher Education in Lebanon

• Designing and developing three training guides in quality assurance for higher education.
• Training Lebanese academics to become experts in the field.
• Encouraging and help higher education institutions to establish their own institutional quality centers.
• Benefiting from this program as a base for institutional self-improvement in the field.

• Preparing training guides in the field of quality assurance and making them available to all institutions of higher educations through the project website.
• Training Lebanese academics (from all Lebanese higher education institutions) on higher education quality assurance.
• Suggesting performance indicators and standards for quality assurance for the Lebanese higher education institutions.

Running Projects:

ALTAIR Project
Project background
In a globalised world where knowledge creation is essential and competition becomes critical, Higher Education Institutions are put under pressure to formulate, discuss and communicate clear priorities and focus on efficient management, planning and resource processes to achieve excellence and ensure continuous performance improvement. In recent years, many Arab Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has been adversely affected by economic social and even political conflict situations as well as by diminishing financial resources.
In view to this, the overall objective of the project is to strengthen the institutional capacity of Arab Universities in support of policy, management and planning at national and regional levels in order to meet accountability needs and successfully address growing demands upon Arab HEIs, despite diminishing resources.

Objective
A major mean capable to simultaneously generate improvement of Universities management, planning capacities and overall institutional performance is the development and embedding of a quality culture for institutional quality assurance within HEIs. Referring to the European experience and the statement of the Berlin Communiqué stressing that “the primary responsibility for assuring quality lies with higher education institutions”, it is evident that putting in place effective mechanisms for assuring quality within an institution enables a critical self-analysis of its programmes, its institutional capacities and its services as well as formulation of recommendations for improvements. In consequence embedding quality culture and continuous implementation of self-assessment mechanisms within HEIs may lead to increased efficiency of planning, administrative and management of Universities.

In view to this, the specific project objective addresses the Development of sustainable Quality Culture and Capacity Building Quality Assurance in Arab Universities (AUs).

Partners include:
University of Alicante (Spain), Ministère de l’Education Nationale (Morocco), Miguel Hernández University of Elche (Spain), Association of arab universities (Jordan), Newcastle university (United Kingdom), Beirut Arab University (Lebanon), Direction Général de L’Enseignement Supérieur (Lebanon) and M.U.B.S (Lebanon) in addition to many other universities from Germany, UK, Palestine & Egypt.

TIES Project
About Ties
TIES - TOWARDS AN INTERNATIONALISATION OG HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK FOR THE MEDA REGION.
The purpose of the project is to contribute to the development of international relations (IRs) management in HEIs in the MEDA region, in particular in Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan.

The project partnership is comprised of 3 European partners with expertise in institutional internationalization (UA, UPMF, and TUGM) and 12 partners from the MEDA region, hailing from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon (2 per country). All seek to improve their international relations management.

The project will focus on strengthening the know-how and management capacities of the staff of the partner universities, and to build efficient structures for international relations. The project includes different types of actions, including on-site observation sessions, human resources development for both top-level management (Strategic level) and IRO staff (Practical level), the development of strategic internationalization plans for the participant institutions (with a period until 2015) and, the main output, a formalized regional network dedicated to internationalization. All the activities are designed to be complementary and drive the participants towards a more innovative and united approach to internationalisation and the management of international relations.

Objective
Overall objective: To develop institutional capacity in the area of internationalization for MEDA country institutions through the transfer of know-how, managerial capacities and good practice for the management or IROs (International Relations Offices).
Specific objectives:

• Develop an internationalization culture through regional actions;
• Provide appropriate knowledge and means and methods to improve internationalization actions of MEDA partner country institutions;
• Create a recognized regional network for internationalization for good practice transfer.
• Outcomes and outputs
• The main objective of the TIES Project is the improvement of international relations management of the partner universities in the MEDA region.
• This main goal is expected to be reached through: the transfer of experiences, the organisation of trainings for the qualification of human resources in the area of internationalisation, the design of documents and action plans to help to develop a culture of international relations, and finally the set up of a network for the internationalisation of the MEDA Region.
• As a result of the objectives above, the project aims at producing numerous technical and managerial benefits for its partner institutions.
• The main tangible results of TIES are: 7 sets of workshop training, plus its materials, qualification of over 150 managers for international relations, project and network websites, creation or improvement of websites dedicated only to international relation activities in every partner institution (12), a publication for the IRO Management in the MEDA Context, institutional internationalisation plans in each partner university, and a regional internationalisation network for the MEDA region.
• What is more, it is expected that the project will make an important contribution in developing an internationalization culture for the higher education systems in the Mediterranean region. In that sense, other results are: increased knowledge in the field of international relations management; enhancement of their management and performance quality; improvement in the understanding of their role with regard to knowledge, to students, to the environment; enhancement of their community leadership; consolidation of their ties with other universities; new directional strategic thinking; self- evaluation techniques; new contacts and the participating on new projects; and prestige.

for more information:or to discuss a new Tempus or Erasmus Mundus proposal with (M.U.B.S.) Lebanon, please contact Dr. Bassem Kaissi    bkaissi@mubs.edu.lb