Notes on Contributors
Badr Aboul-Ela
earned his PhD from the University of Aberdeen, UK, and held several academic administrative positions at Mansoura University, Egypt, and United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). He published a total of 107 articles in refereed journals. He won several research prizes and awards including National Prize for Research, Egypt, 1978; Abdel-Hamid Showman’s Prize, 1988; and Presidential Distinction Medal, for Excellence in Research, 1994. He was one of the founding members of the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA), in the UAE and was appointed as its Director in February 2007. He was elected Vice-President of Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE) since it started and until May 2016, then as its President till 2019. He served as a member of the International Advisory Council of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) in the United States of America from 2015–2018. Dr. Aboul-Ela participated in numerous institutional and program accreditation review teams in the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.He passed away in December 2019.
Bassam Alhamad
is an expert in quality assurance and accreditation in higher education. He was the Former Director of the Quality Assurance & Accreditation Center (QAAC) at University of Bahrain. Dr. Alhamad is a member of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Advisory Board. He holds a PhD degree in Process Systems Engineering. He is an affiliate member of INQAAHE, an ABET Program Evaluator, and an ISO Expert in ISO 9001:2008, ISO 10015 and ISO17025. He is also a member of the Education Committee in the Bahrain Chambers of Commerce. His areas of interest are in quality enhancement in higher education, strategic planning, institution and program review, accreditation, modelling, simulation, control, and optimization in water desalination processes. He is a registered Certified Trainer and a Certified Life Skills Coach with more than 1000 hours of training experience. He delivered more than 350 training programs covering about 8000 persons. He reviewed more than 20 colleges, covering review of more than 100 programs in more than 15 universities. He acted as an assessor and evaluator and provided consultancy for more than 20 Government Ministries and Organizations in Bahrain, as part of Excellence Programs, in the areas of Value Based Management, Change Management, Government Competitiveness, Organizational Governance.
Tariq Alsindi
is the General Director of the National Qualifications Framework and National Examination at the Education & Training Quality Authority of Bahrain (BQA). He is currently the Secretary General of the Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE). Along with his 32 years of experience in teaching, research and academic administration, Dr. Tariq has served as a consultant in various national and international missions including the UNESCO and World Bank. He also took part in numerous academic programs and institutional accreditation review-teams in many countries and participated as a Jury member in the e-Government Excellence Award. Dr. Tariq also conducted many projects for the private and government sectors in the Kingdom of Bahrain and published several papers in the area of Information Systems, Quality Assurance and Qualifications Framework. He was the recipient of His Majesty King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Medals of Appreciation in 2017 for his efforts to serve the Kingdom.
Philip Ayoo
is the Principal Innovation and Outreach Officer at the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), providing leadership in the coordination of research, innovation and outreach activities for higher education institutions in East Africa. Previously, he was faculty at the School of Information Sciences, Moi University, Kenya. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from Makerere University, Uganda.
Nadia Badrawi
is an Egyptian expert in Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education and a professor Emeritus of Paediatrics at Cairo University. At an international level, Professor Badrawi is a Board Member of the Advisory Council of the CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG), the TNE QB advisory board, the Global Paediatrics Education Consortium (GPEC) and she served three terms on the board of INQAAHE. At the regional level, Professor Badrawi is the main founder and currently the President of the Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE). At a national level, Professor Badrawi is a board member of Medical Sector Committee for Planning and Development and she is chairing the reform of Medical education committee for undergraduate and foundation years at the Supreme Council of Egyptian Universities. She was one of the main founders to establish and develop the National Quality Assurance Authority in Education in Egypt.
Linda L. Baer
served over thirty years in numerous executive level positions at Civitas Learning, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Minnesota State College and University System, Bemidji State University, and Minnesota State University Mankato. Currently, she is a senior level consultant in higher education. Her focus is to inspire leaders to innovate, integrate and implement solutions to improve student success and transform institutions for the future. Baer publishes and presents nationally in academic innovations, educational transformation, next generation leadership, alliances and partnerships, the campus of the future, shared leadership, and building organizational capacity in analytics. She has co-presented workshops and presentations on analytics in higher education.
Christian Blanco
is Coordinator of Public Engagement and International Affairs at the National Council of Education of Chile (CNED). He holds a BA in Philosophy, a BA in Sociology and a MSc in Social Systems at the University of Chile (UCH), as well as an MSc in Sociology at Oxford. He previously served as Academic Director at the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities and held diverse positions at the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC). Mr. Blanco has diverse teaching and research experience, including several papers on matters of higher education.
Michael Bradshaw
is a quality assurance professional at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies (UWI) since 2018. He also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at the UWI, St Augustine Campus, School of Education in the area of Educational Leadership since 2002. He served as Executive Director of the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago from 2009 to 2018. He serves as a Director on several quality assurance organization including INQAAHE, CANQATE and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) VUSSC Management Committee; and has worked on several Task Forces on higher education and quality assurance in the Caribbean and British Commonwealth. He is also a Quality Assurance Consultant working with several Caribbean countries and the COL developing regulations, policies and quality standards. He holds a BEd (Sci), and two master’s/MPhil degrees from the University of the West Indies and is a currently a PhD Candidate. His research interest includes management of educational institutions, attitudes towards the environment, quality assurance impact on higher education and higher education institutions and, qualifications frameworks and mutual recognition. He has presented academic papers on Qualifications Frameworks at several local, regional and international conferences on quality assurance. He has co-authored several textbooks in the area of Primary Science and one on Local Scientists in the Caribbean published by Longmans.
Ronald Brunton
is a Caribbean tertiary level educator, researcher and administrator. His interests are in the evaluation of higher education policy, educational indicators, curriculum, distance and alternative education delivery systems, quality assurance and the role of education in national development. He is the Director of Academic Services at the UWI School of Business and Applied Studies Ltd. (UWI-ROYTEC), a business college in Trinidad and Tobago. He served as President of the Caribbean Area Network for Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education (CANQATE) from 2015–2017.
Lemka Ismailova
has a PhD in Pedagogic Science, Director of National Accreditation Agency in Russia, member of European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). She has extensive experience in the field of education and, among others, was the Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Ingushetia. Her service has been acknowledged through awards such as “Minister of the Year – 2009”, Diploma of Honour and the “Honorary Worker” badge of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation, honorary title Merited Teacher of the Republic of Ingushetia, and Gratitude of the Head of the Republic of Ingushetia. Dr. Ismailova is well known to the education community of Russia as Principal of the first in the Republic of Ingushetia School for special needs children. She is currently Professor of the Department of Surdopedagogy in Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg.
Guo Jun
holds a Master of Arts degree in Comparative Education from Yunnan University. Currently, she pursues her doctoral degree at Shanghai Normal University. She mainly engages in research on international organizations and quality assurance of higher education.
Dewin Justiniano
holds a master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Management Development from the National Chung Cheng University of Taiwan. Previously, he studied a BA in Telecommunication engineering and a MA in Project Management in the Central American Technological University (UNITEC) in Honduras. At present, Dewin works as a project coordinator at the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) for the areas of internationalization and research, and has been involved in several research projects related to higher education, quality assurance, learning outcomes and student engagement. He’s also one of the online instructors for the faculty of Mathematics at UNITEC.
Susanna Karakhanyan
is President of INQAAHE and employed by the Abu Dhabi Government as Higher Education Policy & Regulation Director at the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge in the United Arab Emirates. She consults governments on policymaking, governance as well as external and internal QA systems in a diversity of contexts globally. Dr. Karakhanyan holds an MSEd in Educational Administration/Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and a PhD in Social Sciences from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests mainly evolve around higher education policymaking, governance and administration, reforms, policy diffusion and transfer, and external and internal quality assurance. Her research background has helped her tremendously in the establishment of new and evaluation/review of existing external and internal (both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions) quality assurance systems in a diversity of contexts at the international level.
Maria Kelo
is currently serving as the Director of the ENQA Secretariat and has a wide range of experience related to higher education. Her tasks within ENQA include: to manage the work of the ENQA Secretariat, act as Secretary to the ENQA Board, support and coordinate ENQA member agencies, manage projects, and represent the association. She previously worked as Senior Officer for the Academic Cooperation Association, where she was actively involved as an expert in higher education policy developments and reforms at national and European level (Bologna, ET2010); higher education internationalization and international cooperation; mobility; student services and attractiveness of European higher education; trans-national education.
Mike Kuria
is the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA). Before joining IUCEA, Mike Kuria was Director, Center for Quality Assurance at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya. He was also the coordinator of an initiative by IUCEA in conjunction with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that sought to introduce a higher education regional quality assurance system in East Africa. He was founder Secretary General of the East African Quality Assurance Network (EAQAN). He is an associate professor of literature and a graduate of the University of Leeds, UK from where he obtained his PhD in English.
Mary Catharine Lennon
is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board (PEQAB) and a Research Associate at the Centre for Canadian and International Higher Education, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (UofT). With a PhD from the UofT, her academic and professional activities are in international and comparative higher education policy research, development and advice in areas including system design, accountability and quality assurance, evaluation and learning outcomes. She has worked with institutional, provincial, inter-provincial, and international educational agencies including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, and the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Grace Lu
graduated from the University of Manchester in 2018 with a PhD degree in Education. She has conducted research focusing on inclusive education, higher education, and social networking. She is now an Assistant Research Fellow of the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), the national quality assurance agency of Taiwan. She is one of the board directors of the Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN), the international higher education quality assurance network for Asia and Pacific region. She is also a member of Enabling Education Network (EENet), a global information sharing and learning network focusing on encouraging and supporting innovation and critical thinking on inclusion, equity, and rights in education. She is involved with several research projects, such as the analytical study on the development of the Taiwan Qualifications Framework (TWQF). Her book Help Is Just a Click Away: Social Network Sites and Support for Parents of Children with Special Needs was published in 2019 by Vernon Press.
Orla Lynch
is the Head of International for Quality and Qualifications Ireland. Orla has been involved in the quality assurance (QA) of education and training in Ireland for over 20 years, leading out on the development of a range of national QA frameworks in that period. Orla is also involved in QA work internationally through her work with ENQA, membership of the Quality Assurance Network and as a serving member of the INQAAHE Board of Directors.
Leah Matthews
serves as the Executive Director of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission located in Washington, DC and is responsible for developing and executing an integrated long-term strategy for assuring high quality in distance education. Dr. Matthews began serving as the DEAC Executive Director on April 1, 2013. Dr. Matthews came to DEAC from her previous position as Vice President for Recognition Services at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), the national coordinating organization for higher education accrediting organizations. In that role, she managed the CHEA recognition process for 60 accreditors that provide regional, national and programmatic accreditation. Dr. Matthews earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Education from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, a Master of Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD in Education from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Milena Prado
has a BA in Educational Psychology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently part of Agencia Qualitas as a member of the professional team, in charge of coordinating accreditation and evaluation processes offered to higher education institutions in Chile. In this position, she has gained experience in assessment and consultancy processes in quality assurance in higher education programs.
Anely Ramírez
is Executive Director of the National Council of Education of Chile (CNED). She holds a BA in Business and Administration at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) and a PhD in Higher Education at the New York University (NYU). Previously, Dr. Ramírez held positions at the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC), she served as Head of Research at CNED, and engaged in different works at PUC. She authored diverse papers on higher education and lead and participated in several national and international research projects on the subject.
Judith Scharager
obtained her BA and her professional degree in psychology in 1978 from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She holds a master’s degree in Public Health, from the Universidad de Chile, and a PhD in Higher Education Studies from Leiden University. She currently works as a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Since 2007, she is also the Executive Director of Qualitas Accrediting Agency, dedicated to evaluate and certify quality of higher education undergraduate and master’s level programs in Chile, as well as offering consultancy to universities on quality assurance.
Erika Soboleva
studied International Economics at the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (2001–2006). Erika defended a thesis “Competitive behavior of the IT-consulting companies in Russia” in 2008. In 2009 she started working for the International office of the Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career development (AKKORK) and in 2016 became its Director. She has been on the INQAAHE’s Board since 2013, APQN Board member in 2014–2016, and a member of an ENQA Steering Committee, which led an extraordinary evaluation of the ENQA Agencies Review process.
Erika’s research interests lies in the areas of quality evaluation and quality assurance in education, e-learning quality evaluation, quality criteria, quality assurance systems in different countries and their comparison. Erika has published more than 60 works on quality assurance in a renowned Russian journal in education Vysshee obrazovanie v Rossii (Higher Education in Russia), an all-Russian magazine Katchestvo obrazovaniya (Education Quality), in several books of abstracts from APQN, INQAAHE 2011–2012, 3rd ISQM and OEB2010 conferences.
Bjørn Stensaker
(PhD) is a professor of higher education, and the director of LINK – Center for learning, innovation and academic development at University of Oslo. Dr. Stensaker has a special interest in studies of governance and change in higher education, not least in the area of external and internal quality assurance. He has published widely on these issues in a number of international journals and book series.
Wondwosen Tamrat
is an associate professor and founding president of St Mary’s University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is a collaborating scholar of the Program for Research on Private Higher Education (PROPHE) headquartered at the State University of New York at Albany, USA. He is also the coordinator of the private higher education sub-cluster set up for the realization of the Africa Union’s Continental Education Strategy of Africa (CESA). His research focus areas include private higher education, internationalization, equity and diversity in higher education, quality assurance, university governance, and graduate employability.
Angela Yung Chi Hou
is Professor of Higher Education at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Currently, she serves as Associate Dean of College of Education, National Chengchi University, as well as Executive Director of Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan. She has been involved in quality assurance practices and international research for more than 15 years, including serving as Vice President of Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN) and Board member of International Network of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (INQAAHE).
Jianxin Zhang
is the 5th and 6th President (2016–2022) of Asia-Pacific Quality Network (APQN), the largest and most influential non-profit/non-government organization in quality assurance of higher education in the Asia-Pacific Region. She is also Chief Expert of Yunnan Higher Education Evaluation Centre (YHEEC), tenured professor of Yunnan University. She obtained her PhD degree at Peking University in China, her Master degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Switzerland. She has been actively involved in the practices and researches of quality assurance(QA), completing over 30 on-site reviews to universities and QA agencies in Fiji, Russia, India and other countries, conducting dozens of QA workshops in China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries, visiting over 60 countries/territories on various academic assignments and QA matters. She has been teaching for over 30 years in universities, presided and engaged in over 50 research projects, e.g. “APQN Sustainable Development” and “INQAAHE-APQN Survey of Internal and External Quality Assurance Landscape”. She has published six monographs (for example, ASEAN Higher Education at the Beginning of the 21st Century), four translated books (for example, Handbook on Diplomas, Degrees and other Certificates in Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific), 18 edited books and over 200 papers. Among them, 10 received government’s awards.