Mid Project Milestone for the QUEECA TEMPUS Project: First Results and Rising Expectations

The QUEECA (Quality of Engineering Education in Central Asia) TEMPUS project main aim is to set up and to implement a system of quality assurance (QA) of engineering education in Central Asia (CA), finalized to the accreditation of engineering programmes by the award of the EUR-ACE quality label on the basis of the EUR-ACE Framework Standards and related quality requirements and procedures. The project also takes advantage of experience in the European Higher Education Area Education (EHEA) through ENAEE and current efforts in Central Asia countries. More specifically, QUEECA intends to refer to the EUR-ACE Framework Standards (EAFS) and related quality requirements, awarding the EUR-ACE quality label to the accredited programmes. The process will consist in following steps: i) Create National EE Societies (in Kazakhstan, strengthen the already existing KazSEE) and a CA Federation of EES, partnered with SEFI and IFEES; b) Adapt the EUR-ACE Framework Standards (EAFS) and formulate CA Standards (CAEAS) in Russian and English; c) Create Accreditation Centres in each country (with a Regional coordination); train the relevant experts (“accreditors”); d) Run a series of “Trial Accreditations” with international teams to test the draft CAEAS and the local accreditors; e) Taking account of the results of the “Trial Accreditations”, formulate the final version of CAEAS; f) Conduct a first run of (real) accreditations of eng. programmes and award the first EUR-ACE labels throughout CA; g) Formulate a self-supporting financial plan for carrying out accreditations after the project closure (sustainability plan). At the present moment (April 2014) the project has arrived to the mid project milestone and time has come for a thorough internal evaluation taking into account the encouraging results so far obtained, such as the creation of the Kyrgyz Society for engineering Education (October 2013) and the rising expectations from the concerned parties. At the same time, the first steps are done for the foundation of an equivalent organization in Uzbekistan. The paper, shortly, introduces the QUEECA TEMPUS project and reports about the achieved results and the activities scheduled for the next moths. Finally it will be shown why the project is to be considered as a pioneer one, introducing the EUR-ACE system outside th