East Timor became independent in 2022 after decades of Indonesian military occupation and two years of protectorate of United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). Tertiary education had been neglected due to the priorities given to the lower educational levels since 2000 until 2010. As stipulated in the National Education Strategic Plan 2011-2030, quality of education at HEIs has been negatively affected by the outflow of qualified teaching staff after the 1999 Autonomy Referendum. Even though, international support was provided, and many teachers achieved their education through it, there is still high demand for assuring the quality of academic staff. Within an Education Reform (Ministry of Education) to be achieved by 2030, the government aims to develop a quality higher education system, which can provide services according to internationally recognized quality standards, through encouraging the participation of the different partners in the management and financing of HEIs, b) enhancing autonomy in academic, administrative and management issues, c) professionalizing the higher education system, d) assuring social inclusion and e) increasing inter-university and international co-operation.
The National?University?of?Timor?Lorosa'e?(UNTL) is currently a unique public university in Timor Leste, established in November?2000. The mission of UNTL besides promoting itself as excellent education and research institution in the country, clearly stipulates its role in the overall sustainable development of the prevalently agriculture-dependent country though international partnerships (paragraph f). In its strategic document Estratégia de Desenvolvimento 2020-2030, internationalisation is designated as essential key for capacity building of academic staff, assuring quality of education and social inclusion, achieving international research standards. UNTL currently cooperates primarily with HEIs of Lusophony countries. In Europe, only few partnerships have been established and some are dormant. Similarly, is it with CZU cooperation established in 2010 (MoU signed), but not being active nowadays. Therefore, this project aims at resurrecting the contact and trigger an active collaboration at educational, research and institutional-developmental level through mobility of academic staff incl. responsible management. The project activities will contribute to improvement of courses (modern teaching methods, digitalisation in education, online and blended teaching) and research focusing on socio-economic development with a special focus on food security, collective actions, women’s empowerment, and value chains (one of the research priorities for FTA and Department of Socio-Economic Development of UNTL) and through direct participation of mobile staff.
At FTA/CZU, the UNTL mobile staff will take part in relevant courses, provide special lectures and seminars, meet local staff and discuss cooperation on education and research activities and quality assurance and social inclusion. The STA participants will become active members of research teams (Cooperative research team, Food security research group) and Gender Equality Office at FTA, participating in English courses, and joining internal scientific events. From CZU, a STA participant fluent in Portuguese and experienced with QA and inclusion outgo for 6-day stay, mainly participating in teaching courses, providing practical training on socio-economic field data collection and consequent analyses. Besides, they will organise two workshops on QA and inclusion, sharing experience of CZU.
Incoming mobilities, from UNTL to CZU:
- 2 staff for 9 days for teaching (STA)
Outgoing mobilities, from CZU to UNTL:
- 1 Staff for 6 days for teaching (STA)
Available support:
Subsistence costs (flat rate):
- Incoming staff to the CR: 140 EUR / day (1.-14. day)
Travel costs:
In addition to the subsistence costs, a transport allowance is added, which is graded according to the distance between the domestic institution and the place of stay abroad. It is paid once for whole mobility (for travel to and back).
- For East Timor, the travel support is 1500 EUR / participant.