gms | German Medical Science

It is clearly indicated in the mission statement of KaHo Sint-Lieven (= Catholic University College Ghent ) that we are an internationally oriented university. We are especially aiming at stimulating international cooperation within education, services to society and research. We are convinced that within the quickly changing society international cooperation is the only possibility to increase the competitiveness of our curricula. So we are contributing to the further unification of the European Higher Education Area. That’s why in the past we started up activities within Tempus with Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Romania which are now of course part of the EU. Nowadays we focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia in order to contribute also here to the reform of higher education within the spirit of the Bologna declaration.

TEMPUS officially started on 7 May 1990 and has been recently prolonged with the approval of Tempus IV in January 2008. The program aims at reforming the educational system in the eligible partner countries (http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/tempus/news_en.html). Reform in education has to be a dynamic process in order to stimulate the transition towards the EU. This reform should focus on:

• adoption of a system based on mainly 3 cycles
• introduction of ECTS
• introduction of a total quality management system with involvement of all stakeholders and development of a flexible curriculum
• development of contacts with society

KaHo Sint-Lieven was the first Tempus project contractor involving all universities of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The main goal was the preparation of the reform of higher education. During this project it was obvious that mainly the medical faculty showed great interest in quality management. That’s why afterwards a number of new projects have been set up regarding the quality in the medical faculties:

• Quality management in medicine
• Quality management procedure for promoting university-enterprise cooperation
• EU oriented self-evaluation report procedures for BIH universities
• The role of stakeholders in quality assurance procedures at BIH medical faculties

By promoting cooperation within Tempus the medical faculties of Bosnia-Herzegovina will have the possibility to develop a modern curriculum adapted to EU standards. Students get more involved in the decision making process. Contacts with society are being developed much more. Research will be stimulated and curricula will be made more flexible and more competence oriented.