In the presence of Director of Quality Assurance Assist.Lect.Mr.Hemen Rasheed Agha and the head of Computer Science Department Assist.Prof.Dr.Lway Faisal and the academic staff at the computer science department represented by: Assist.Lect.Ms.Asen Bakir and Assist.Lect.Mr.Mustafa Ghanem from Cihan University Sulaimaniya, a meeting with ZeVA accreditation agency represented by: Mr.Malte Huylmans, Project officer from Central Evaluation and Accreditation Agency Hanover (Zeva), on Wednesday 29th of June 2022. The meeting brought together the university quality assurance, the experts and academicians to exchange knowledge and ideas regarding Academic Quality and Academic Accreditation in particular.
However, ZeVA is an evaluation and accreditation in teaching and learning, higher education governance and management main fields of activity. Since 1995, ZEVA has also been active in the field of quality assurance in higher education. In this context, it has successfully cooperated with the higher education institutions in Germany, Europe and beyond.
The meeting emphasizes on the mechanisms, procedures and requirements to get the ZeVA accreditation for the Computer Science Department at Cihan University Sulaimaniya by May 2023.
The International Accreditation brings a wide variety of benefits to both students and to institutions by; raising the profile of learning and teaching of the university and demonstrating to students a measurable commitment to the quality of teaching. “Accredited status” means that students and the public can expect that the University lives up to its promises. It means that a student can have confidence that a degree or credential has value. Accreditation signals that the public can have confidence in the worth of the University.
Cihan University Sulaimaniya will invest a lot of efforts in order to get this certificate. The journey of the institutional accreditation will continue for about 1 years. It will start with preparing a detailed self-evaluation report that assesses the University’s management, resources, quality systems, educational procedures and other aspects related to the teaching and learning process. Then ZEvA will form a panel composed of German experts who have extensive academic and professional experiences in higher education.
The panel will conduct a site-visit to Cihan University Sulaimaniya to overlook the University’s facilities and to meet with administrators, academicians, alumni, and students of the University. Based on the experts’ evaluation, ZEvA’s commission should award institutional accreditation to Cihan University Sulaimaniya.
The methods and criteria of evaluation applied by ZEvA are rooted in the common European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. ZEvA is s a founding member of The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and The European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA).