CREATING A COMMON GROUND FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY CHEMISTRY (STEM) LECTURERS IN EUROPE

Today, we are faced with immense global challenges in finding sustainable equilibria between socio-economic, political, and ecological concerns. The European Chemistry Thematic Network (ECTN), the European University Association (EUA) and the European Commission are committed to sustainable improvement of the quality of university chemistry education to cope with these challenges. In this position paper, we advocate the creation of the Eurolecturer Academy (ELA), an innovative, European state of the art higher education learning platform serving academics in their continuous professional development of teaching competences and thereby supporting academics to educate students to be successful in the changing world. Within this newly established educational entity, there will be two levels of membership, Associated membership and Full membership. The ELA will not only facilitate continuous professional development of university teaching staff but will at the same time create a structure to support recognition of teaching competences of lecturers within the European dimension in teaching and learning. The certification will profit from the new 5th European Qualification Framework for micro-credentials, providing a much needed “academic currency” for the purpose of recognition of academic credentials. The ELA micro-credentials will be issued by certifying the learning outcomes of short-term learning experiences in the field of teaching and learning in higher education. The ELA will provide a micro-credentials catalogue that will address the needs for professional development of lecturers and ensure the quality of the micro-credentials through close cooperation with the internationally operating accreditation organization ASIIN (https://www.asiin.de/en/) using quality standards and valid assessment according to international best practice. Keywords: continuous professional development, chemistry education, Eurolecturer Academy, university teaching staff