BIODAQUA Meetings
Professor Papoutsoglou, BIODAQUA Coordinator, and Mrs M.Eleftheriou, BIODAQUA project Manager, participated in the EU/CANADA project Directors meeting on behalf of the European partner institutes. The conference came at a very inconvenient time as far as lecturing duties were concerned; however, Dr Burnell, Cork University and Dr. Vanreusel, Gent University, both planned to visit the Huntsman Marine Science Center in February 2003.
There was a very full agenda, and many participants, though the BIODAQUA team was deeply disappointed that only two of the BIODAQUA Canadian partners put in an appearance (list of participants [XLS, 139KB]), at this Conference held in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The conference covered three days and many subjects. Therefore the two BIODAQUA delegates were hard pressed to follow all the presentations, as there were many parallel events. However, some of the most noteworthy of these can be accessed here:
- Student Recruitment and Orientation for Mobility (Sharon Blanchard, Dalhousie University)
- Developing an International Curriculum through problem-based modules (Elizabeth Wesseling, Maastricht University)
- Balancing Risk Management and Responsibility in Managing Exchange and Study Abroad Programs
- Sustaining the Program Prof. Dr. Dietmar P. F. Möller, University of Hamburg, Germany, Prof. Dr. Roy Crosbie, California State University, Chico, USA
In addition, there were presentations in small study groups, one of which was concerned with portability of credits, during which the very different US and Canadian systems were explained and compared with the EU ECTS system. It quickly became clear that there was little compatibility between the ECTS system as utilized by the BIODAQUA partner universities and the Canadian BIODAQUA universities, as there is no portability of credits even between Canadian universities, sometimes not even within the same province. This was a disturbing feature which had not till then been fully understood by the BIODAQUA partner universities. The non-attendance of the nearby Canadian partner institutes did little to alleviate The justifiable apprehensions raised by the discussion could not be alleviated by the Canadian partners, because only two were present on the last day, when a BIODAQUA partners meeting was held.
Present at this meeting were Prof. Papoutsoglou and Mrs M.Eleftheriou, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, Dr Mark Costello, Director, Huntsman Marine Science Center, St.Andrews. Nova Scotia, and Dr Bruce Hatcher, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
