4th Information Bulletin

Dear Reader,

We are pleased to present to your attention the 4th Information Bulletin issued by the La MANCHE project consortium. We in La MANCHE have recently entered the third and final year of the project life and have inevitably started counting down the remaining months until October 2015. A huge amount of work has been completed during the last 26 months and numerous project outputs are already put on the table.

Project partners have prepared and published the External Assessment Report on Leadership and Management Skills and Mod-els in the Higher Education Institutions in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the Changing Higher Education In-stitutions in Societies in Transition In-depth Study Report, the Handbook of European Governance Practices in Higher Educa-tion, the Student Engagement Toolkit, the guidance materials and syllabi in Leadership and Change Management, the Commu-nication and Post-Project Dissemination Strategy.

68 trainers and change agents have been trained at the Trainings for Trainers organised at consortium level. In 2014 more than 1500 staff members at the 23 project Partner Country institutions underwent trainings in change management at institutional level. More than 1400 students and staff members attended the public lectures in Grassroots Leadership organised in the 23 La MANCHE universities in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The immense amount of work carried out so far has been also positively assessed by the Executive Agency which approved the project Intermediate Report in July 2014.

With the start of the third and final project year and through the establishment of the La MANCHE Virtual Think Tank (VTT), the project also entered into a new stage. We are currently working hard to attract and engage with as many external stake-holders in higher education as possible. The main purpose of this collaboration and ongoing dialogue on higher education re-forms facilitated through the VTT is to listen to all interest parts’ opinions and perceptions and to incorporate the relevant recommendations and viewpoints into the Strategy for Leading and Managing Change in Higher Education (La MANCHE Strate-gy). The La MANCHE Strategy will be the main legacy of the project and shall continue to be implemented in the La MANCHE Partner Countries institutions long after the project life ends.

We hope that 2015 will be productive and successful for the La MANCHE project and a feasible and relevant La MANCHE Strat-egy will be jointly created with the contribution of numerous stakeholders in higher education from Armenia, Belarus, Geor-gia, Moldova, Ukraine and from the EU countries.

We would like to thank everyone for the support and commitment towards the La MANCHE Strategy and project cause and to wish you happy Christmas and New Year.

Yours faithfully,

La MANCHE Project Consortium