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QUESTE-SI – Quality System of Science and Technology Universities for Sustainable Industry

QUESTE-SI is a project funded under the Lifelong Learning Programme (ERASMUS) of the EU that runs for 30 months till January 2013. The overall objective of the project is to promote sustainability in the field of technical and engineering education. Sustainability is here defined as the integration of dimensions (in particular, economic, social, environmental) beyond technical dimensions in the engineering education.

The QUESTE-SI initiative has two scopes:
  1. The QUESTE-SI quality assurance system consists of a set of criteria and methodological recommendations that allow the institutions to evaluate their achievements in the domain and to design and implement a progress strategy to the sustainability of their educational offering.
  2. The QUESTE-SI label is an accreditation label that is awarded to the institutions after a process consisting of a self-assessment, an optional phase of guided self-development and an audit visit by a team of specially trained experts.
The project is primarily targeted towards engineering Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in Europe. The development of the label will also contribute to a clarification and better transparency of the engineering education landscape, as sustainability is quickly becoming a key factor for the choice of a HEI. This will benefit to students when they select the institution in which to pursue their studies. This will also bring benefits to companies when recruiting or launching cooperation with higher education institutions.

The project is managed by a consortium led by EFMD and technically coordinated by ENQHEEI, two leading academic networks in the field of quality of higher education. The consortium is composed of 18 partners from all over Europe, as well as 2 third-country partners. This allows to take into account the diversity of the national and regional initiatives in the field of sustainable education and to guarantee the neutrality of the QUESTE-SI initiative. This is a crucial factor to facilitate its adoption in the different European countries.

The professional diversity of partners also ensures that the point of view of every stakeholder is taken into account, whether HEIs, large companies and SMEs, trade unions, professional federations and associations.

All materials and methodologies will be pilot tested on a sample of eight pilot institutions to identify and correct any potential shortcomings before the roll out of the quality assurance system.

The QUESTE-SI project outcomes are:
  • A set of background documents including the analysis and comparison of international quality systems;
  • A set of reference documents, including the description of quality criteria, a referential and guidelines for the self-assessment. These documents are complemented via an online platform.
  • An evaluation methodology, allowing the institutions to evaluate themselves, to benchmark their achievements against similar HEIs and to put in place corrective actions, if needed.
  • A panel of auditors and field experts, trained to audit the institutions and to provide them advice and guidance during the self-assessment process and guided development phase.
  • An accreditation body, composed of recognised authorities in the field, who decide to confer the accreditation label, QUESTE-SI.
  • A first group of eight pioneer institutions that will have gone through the entire process and for some, been awarded the QUESTE-SI label.

Project Partners

EFMD is the project co-ordinator and as such monitors and contributes to all project activities. In particular EFMD coordinates WP1 (meta-referential), WP9 (project management) and WP10 (project dissemination).

For more information, please visit the project website: www.queste.eu