16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

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16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations System and Host Country Agencies
for their work. Ninety six percent had shared their knowledge with colleagues and
students through presentations, workshops, on-the-job training, individual consultations
or teaching. Eighty seven percent had developed useful contacts during the
fellowship and seventy six percent of them were still in touch with their host institutions.
The quality of the fellowship programme itself had been judged very highly.
Both the host institutions and the training programmes were considered suitable
by ninety four percent of the participating fellows. Eighty one percent felt that the
guidance they had received had been good or very good. Eighty two percent found
the quality and adequacy of the facilities made available to them good or very good.
On the other hand the IAEA fellowships programme could improve in some fields.
Fellows felt that they did not receive enough recognition by their home countries and
home institutions upon return from training abroad. Hardly any fellow had received
a salary increase. Some fellows felt that travel arrangements had not been well prepared.
Some had found stipends to be too low and payments too late, often because
of difficulties in opening bank accounts. Others mentioned inadequate language
training and housing conditions. Several respondents suggested that a contact person
should be designated in advance allowing to prepare for the training programme before
its beginning. Some reported that staff and supervisors of the training institution
did not dedicate enough time to the fellows. Other respondents suggested that host
institutions should be evaluated on a regular basis and that training by IAEA within
their region should be further promoted. As of October 2006, IAEA had been training
around eight hundred fellows a year in developed countries and six hundred in
developing countries.
169. Due to the low response rate by former fellows, IAEA decided to follow up on the
first survey with an in-depth study to validate the data gathered in 2005. Former fellows
had been selected from Tunisia, Uganda, Jordan, Myanmar, Chile, Nicaragua and
Slovenia who had not participated in the first survey. Out of 117 remaining fellows,
88 former fellows (or 74%) were contacted after considerable efforts; 56 of them (or
64%) answered the questionnaire. The countries had been chosen with regard to size,
developing status and regions. Results from that study correlated with those from the
first survey. Therefore, results of the first survey could be considered as representative
of the entire base population of former fellows from the years 2001 and 2002 with the
exception of the questions regarding the fellows not returning to their home countries
since IAEA had not been able to trace those fellows. 20 IAEA intended to conduct
further surveys biennially in order to create a continuous systematic evaluation of the
fellowship and other programmes. The organization aimed at establishing mechanisms
which would permit ongoing contacts between the home and the host institutions and
would also serve as platforms for regional and interregional exchange. In that regard,
IAEA proposed the “in-touch project” and the creation of an institutional roster.
20 Th e Report on the IAEA Fellowship Programme Survey and the Report on the In-depth Study of the IAEA Fellowship
Programme can both accessed online at: http://tc.iaea.org/tcweb/publications/otherpublications/default.asp