Dear Colleagues,

This entry represents the first in a series of occasional posts designed to better acquaint the world with Northern Illinois University (www.niu.edu) and our Division of Outreach, Engagement and Information Technologies (http://www.niu.edu/outreach/about).

Dr Barbara Ischinger, Director of Education at the OECD, visited Melbourne recently to launch the report of the OECD Review of Higher Education Institutions and Regional and City Development in Victoria. This review was conducted in parallel with the PASCAL Universities and Regional Engagement (PURE) project in Melbourne.

Jarl Bengtsson, Chair of the PASCAL Board visited Melbourne recently. During his visit, he met with PASCAL Associates and other colleagues, and visited the new location in the European Union Centre at RMIT. During his visit, Jarl presented a seminar on ‘Education, Learning  and Brain Research: An International Perspective’. His paper generated rich discussion, and will be available shortly on the PASCAL website.

Friends,

Attached is the latest GACER News which highlight Jean-Marc Fontan’s newest work in creating a space for community-university-advocacy knowledge to work together in the context of social housing in Montreal.

Don’t forget last minute registration to CU Expo!

Istanbul April 28-30 – European Adult Education Network Conference on Local and Global Development – GACER to present there

Also a very interesting newish network/project called Building Global Democracy

U-Map is a project funded by the European Commission in which earlier work concerned with the European classification of higher education institutions is further developed and implemented. U-Map offers two tools to enhance transparency. ProfileFinder produces a list of higher education institutions (HEIs) that are comparable on the characteristics that have been selected. ProfileViewer gives an institutional activity profile that can used to compare three HEIs. U-Map is presented in demo-mode.