EUROPROC: Summing Up the Results of Academic Year 2017-2018

The first academic year of EUROPROC project life is almost over, so it’s high time to sum up the preliminary results of our activities and to define future steps.
The project has been developing according to the plan. Despite some regretful changes in the project team (Natalia Kostenko’s untimely desease), we did our best to secure project’s quality. Amongst the most significant results of our work one can point out the Basics of European Project Activities course curriculum development and accreditation by ZNU Academic Council. In order to make our course more user-friendly, we’ve created its online version on the Moodle platform. From now on, as the course has become an integral part of Master and PhD students of Natural and Exact Sciences study plan, it will be attended by 120 students annually. In the nearest future, the course is to be reviewed by external national and international experts, and the course book is to be published to promote the course implementation all over Ukraine.
The Masters of the Faculty of Biology pioneered in studying the course in 2017-2018. From February to May 2018, 73 students have successfully accomplished all the course tasks; according to internal quality monitoring, the vast majority of both students and teachers are totally satisfied with the experience gained. Throughout Summer, our team is working hard to improve the course materials and to adjust the course to labour market requirements.

In addition to that, some modules of the course have been taught to 82 Bachelor students of various faculties as an elective discipline. The course implementation experience has been summarized in 3 research papers, one of the published in Web of Science journal. A lot of attention has been paid to project promotion both in academic circles and on community level. Last year, 3 promotional events have been conducted, as well as Regional round table on challenges and perspectives of project management and a webinar. A fruitful cooperation with APREI has been established. The project materials have been used for writing a course of small grant writing trainings for academic staff. The majority of the project’s team has also taken part in Pan-Ukrainian Young Researcher Career Development Summer School held in ZNU in July 2018. In total, our events were attended by more than 500 direct participants, while the number of indirect participants exceeds 1000.
What is also important, the majority of the participants supported the idea of holding such events on a regular basis. So, next year we would be happy to meet our partners and all interested parties at ZNU (see EUROPROC website announcements for the schedule of events). Another EUROPROC contribution to the university development is the equipment (PC, projector, conference system, 2 webcams and a sreeen) for the future Centre of European Studies that would become a regional platform for project initiatives, research and academic activities etc. EUROPROC has become an inspiration source for all the student and academic community of the university. In February 2018, ZNU has submitted 6 project proposals for Jean Monnet program, 1 of them being a success.
Apart from that, the university has also won Erasmus+ KA2 grant. We have no doubts that the number of winners would only rise from year to year! EUROPROC project team would like to thank all those who supported us throughout this tense yet productive academic year and hopes for fruitful cooperation in 2018-2019!