ISLE: Compendium of Good Practices

One of the first EU projects that I got involved in (including their management on the Agro-Know side) was ISLE. ISLE (Innovation in the teaching of Sustainable development in Life sciences in Europe) was a project funded under the Erasmus programme of the European Commission and gave me the opportunity to join a large network of university teachers in Life Science Universities around Europe (mostly agricultural ones) and work towards developing the expected outcomes of the project. AK was the Dissemination Work Package leader, and I had a really great time disseminating the project in various occasions and using a wide variety of dissemination materials and tools. The project ended on September 30th, 2013 (a couple of weeks ago) and it currently continues in the form of an Association.

It was a really nice surprise today to receive a small package from +Corinne Stewart, the coordinator of the project (and head of the AgroSup Dijon team) and find a printed copy of the Good Practices Compendium, developed by the project.

 

The compendium is already available in a digital form from the ISLE web site - you can download it here. You can also find additional interesting material, in the form of project deliverable in the Outcomes section.

More things are expected in the future from ISLE, including a proposal for the continuation of the network and expansion of its outcomes which is planned and the liaison with related associations and networks. As I am currently one of the Board Members of the ISLE Association, I have the opportunity to be actively involved in the decision making of the next steps of the association and really anxious to see where this will lead during the next months.

That's me, signing for the creation of the ISLE Association!

ISLE 7th (and last) project meeting

The 7th (and last) project meeting of ISLE took place in the lovely premises of the Lighthouse Golf and Spa Resort in Balchik and the International University College (IUC) in Dobrich, Bulgaria, hosted by the IUC partner of the ISLE Network, between 10-14/6/2013. Due to various reasons, I could not attend the two first days of the meeting (in fact, Monday is always the day for travelling and only a dinner takes place, so I only missed Tuesday).

My trip to Balchik was rather long, as due to delays in flights from Athens to Sofia and from Sofia to Varna, I left Athens at 21.30 and reached the hotel room at 03.30 - the taxi ride from the Varna airport to the hotel took almost one hour! It was really hard for me to wake up at 07.30 next morning as expected but still managed to do so...

The program of the meeting was full and I was glad to see that things were progressing since the last time I joined the consortium (I missed the previous project meeting). There were interesting and long discussions related to sustainability of the project and its outcomes, based on predefined questions, while a reporting took place at the end of the day, summarizing the discussions and proposing specific actions.

Presentation of the ISLE Quality Label by Christina Armutlieva

My presentation was held on Thursday and had to do with both the dissemination activities (Agro-Know is the Dissemination WP leader in this project) and the post-project dissemination and sustainability ones. My colleagues have been working on the corresponding deliverable so it was easy for me to prepare the presentation. I also made use of the really interesting analytics for the project web site and some additional ones for the Facebook page of the project; the participants seems to like this new approach!

In addition, the presentation made by the Harper Adams University College team who won the ISLE Students' competition was a really nice surprise; the students presented an interesting approach to recycling using a fresh presentation method. I filmed the whole presentation and discussion which followed after the presentation using my trustworthy Sanyo Xacti CG20. The video is available here.

The HAUC team with Leticia and Corinne after the presentation 

The project ends on September 30th, 2013 and this was the last project meeting. While there is always the possibility that the proposal for the continuation of the project (ISLE 2) will be accepted, it was really strange for all participants to know that this would be the last time that they meet after almost 3 years and various meeting opportunities. I managed to miss only two of the project's meetings; the kick-off one (when I was not even aware of the project) and the 6th one in lovely Maribor, Slovenia, where a colleague of mine participated instead of me.

Last family photo of the ISLE Consortium members

I keep saying that the ISLE consortium is like a big family so each meeting is more like a family reunion and this last meeting just confirmed my point of view; it seems that I was not the only one to see things this way! I am really going to miss you guys!