INQAAHE Talks on March 28, 2024
Quality assurance and the sustainability agenda
March 28, 2024 (Thursday)
09:30 – 11:00 CET/UTC+1
Online (via Zoom)
The higher education community is being increasingly called upon to help finding solutions to today’s pressing global challenges. Ranging from growing social and economic inequalities, poverty and discrimination, environmental sustainability, conflict, technological innovation and quality education, to name just a few, these challenges are well captured in the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This session will consider the role that quality assurance and regulation can play to support higher education providers in contributing to address these challenges and help our increasingly interconnected communities make progress towards the SDGs. To inform our discussion we will be hearing from quality assurance bodies and experts with different experience of embedding SDGs-related considerations in quality assurance processes, and ultimately in the activities of higher education providers.
The recording of this session is available on INQAAHE’s YouTube channel.
The following speakers will join us in this session:
Prof. Angela Yung-Chi Hou
Angela Yung-Chi Hou is Professor of Higher Education at College of Education, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. In 2022, she was elected as President of Chinese Taipei Comparative Education Society. She served as Executive Director of Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) from 2016 to 2021. She has been actively committed to quality assurance practices and international research for more than 15 years, including serving as Vice President & Board member of International Network of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (INQAAHE), Vice President & Board member of Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN). She specializes in higher education policy, quality management, internationalization, faculty development, and quality assurance of cross border higher education.
She serves as Chief-in-Editor of Higher Education Evaluation and Development (HEED) Emerald by HEEACT, Associate Editor of Journal of Asian Pacific Educational Review (SSCI) and Quality in Higher Education (SCOPUS) and several editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals in higher education field. Up to present, she has published more than 130 English and Chinese journal papers, articles, book chapters, reports and monographs in higher education, international education, and quality assurance.
In 2023, she was granted “Outstanding Research Award” by National Science and Technology of Taiwan and “Excellent Research Award “at National Chengchi University.
Dr. Isaac Galobardes
Isaac Galobardes, PhD, assumes the role of Director at the national quality assurance agency in Andorra, Agència de Qualitat de l’Ensenyament Superior d’Andorra (AQUA). His appointment by the Andorran Parliament took place in January 2023. Additionally, he holds a position of Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain).
Before joining AQUA, Dr. Galobardes gained academic experience across various countries. Following his graduation, he worked at Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil). Subsequently, he served as a Programme Director at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China), being involved in international student recruitment and student affairs. Lastly, Dr. Galobardes worked at University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (Morocco) as Internal Quality Coordinator.
Dr. Khairul Salleh Bin Mohamed Sahari
Dr. Khairul Salleh Mohamed Sahari is currently the Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) (Quality Assurance) of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) since May 2019. As the Deputy CEO (Quality Assurance), he is responsible for all quality assurance (QA) activities of the agency which includes policy and standards development, QA assessor development and assignment, accreditation of higher education programmes and providers in the country, equivalency evaluation of foreign qualifications, comparability exercises on QA processes and outcomes, accreditation of prior experiential learning and internal management of the agency. Prior to the current post, he was a professor at Universiti Tenaga Nasional (The Energy University), holding the posts of Assistant Vice Chancellor (Academic), Director of Strategic Planning Centre and senate member of the university, among others. He is also an active assessor for accreditation of engineering programmes under the Board of Engineers Malaysia. Dr. Khairul obtained his Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from Waseda University, Japan in 2000, and his PhD in Engineering from Kanazawa University, Japan in 2006 respectively. He is a senior member of IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and is a Professional Engineer registered with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia.
Solange Pisarz
Solange Pisarz holds a postgraduate degree in international economic law and passed the agrégation competitive examination. She has been a teacher for a few years. Then, at CampusFrance, she was coordinator for Europe and also responsible for researching CampusFrance publications on internationalisation questions. She published several articles on rankings and on international student mobility. Joining Hcéres- French High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education in 2011, she had first started at the Institution Department, where she has organised evaluations of institutions. After that she has contributed to the creation of the Europe and International Department and confirmed her expertise in the field of quality assurance and internationalisation.
Solange is currently working as Executive Director at CTI – Commission des titres d’ingénieur, French quality assurance agency dedicated to the engineering field. Her commitment is also illustrated as ECA Board Member and ECA Chair and now Vice-Chair.
The session will be moderated by:
Dr. Fabrizio Trifiro
Dr Fabrizio Trifiró is Head of Stakeholder Engagement and International Quality Reviews at Ecctis, the agency that manages the qualification recognition function (UK ENIC) on behalf of the UK Government, where he leads on international strategic engagement, TNE and international benchmarking.
Fabrizio joined Ecctis in 2019 after over 10 years with the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) where he led on the quality assurance of UK TNE and the international student experience. In 2022 Fabrizio supported as an independent expert the Office for Students (OfS) in developing their international engagement work around TNE.
Fabrizio is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Network of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (INQAAHE), a member of the Accreditation Committee of the British Accreditation Council (BAC), and an independent member of the Governing Board of Wrexham University in Wales.
With two decades of experience in international higher education and its regulation Fabrizio has acted as independent consultant to a number of quality assurance bodies and international organisations. More recently he supported the development of the Bhutan national credit transfer scheme as part of a broader UNESCO capacity development intervention.
