KTU Hosted ECIU Leadership Development Program

20 representatives of European Consortium ofInnovative Universities (ECIU) members were sharing their knowledge andinsights on leadership and strategic management in higher education context inKaunas University of Technology (KTU) earlier this month.

This was the first time when ECIU’s LeadershipDevelopment Program seminars and workshops took place in Lithuania. KTU is theonly Lithuanian university belonging to the Consortium, uniting the mostinnovative universities in the region.

“KTU has presented real tasks and problems forsolving in the sessions of the Program. All of the issues presented wererelated to international reputation of the university as a centre ofinnovation. We believe that the experience and recommendations from ourcolleagues will contribute to the breakthrough in knowledge and technologytransfer in global markets”, said Asta Pundzienė, KTU Vice-Rector for Researchand Innovations and ECIU Vice-Presidentsince April 2017.

The seminars under the ECIU Leadership DevelopmentProgramme is a continuous project taking place in different cities annually.This year the universities in Barcelona, Kaunas and Brussels were granted theright to organise the seminars.

Insights from Global Experts

“Membership in ECIU allows us to see that manycontemporary universities face the same problems, including challenges inmanagement, attracting talents, internationalisation, or improving researchquality. This helps to believe that the problems can be solved and inspires usto look for best solutions”, said Andrius Jurelionis, the Dean of the Facultyof Civil Engineering and Architecture.

He was immensely impressed by the competencies ofthe lecturers in the Programme.

“The seminars were delivered by professionals, whohave been working in South Africa, Portugal and other countries, assisting inreorganisation and optimisation of educational networks, which means that theyhave tremendous experience”, said Jurelionis.

Networking Opportunities

The Leadership Development Programme seminarscreate a perfect opportunity for colleagues from ECIU member universities toget acquainted with KTU’s study, research, technology transfer and innovationecosystem.

“Colleague from the University of Tampere, Finland,admitted that after finding out that she’d need to work with KTU project wasconcerned, as she did not know much about our university. However, during thesession she found out a lot of new things about KTU and our achievements. Wehave made a really positive impression to the colleagues from other countries”,said Lolita Jurkšienė, Head of Department for Strategic Monitoring andProcesses.

Sara Gustafsson from Linkoping, Sweden was excitedto get to know more about KTU and Kaunas city.

“We received a very warm welcome from KaunasUniversity of Technology, and it was very interesting to get to know theresearchers working here, to look into KTU Santaka Valley laboratories, to findout more about Kaunas and its history”, said Gustafsson. It was her first visitto Kaunas.

Although KTU has joined ECIU in 2016, thecollaboration has already borne fruit.

“KTU is actively involved in the working group forintellectual property and technology transfer, has initiated the researchers’mobility programme. One of the most prominent results is the opening of ECIUheadquarters in Brussels and the possibility to represent KTU when importantdecisions on research policy in European Commission are being made”, said KTU’sVice-Rector Pundzienė.

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