Salzburg Seminar – Universities Project - Milika Dhamo

“The Visiting
Advisors Program
opens up new
opportunities for
meaningful change in
higher education
institutions in
Central and Eastern
Europe and Russia.
Experts from all
countries can freely
debate their
professional
experiences.”
Raoul Kneucker
Federal Ministry for Education,
Science and Culture, Austria
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GOALS
From the perspective of the Universities Project and its Visiting Advisors, there are
two main purposes for a consultant team’s work:
• to provide advice to senior-level colleagues at the host institution on academic
and administrative changes that seem promising as ways to solve problems,
improve operations, or achieve objectives that the host university has identified
for consideration; and
• to offer advice on progressive reforms that will enable the host universities to
play a leadership role in the economic and social advancement of their
respective nations.
There are also two secondary purposes from the point of view of the visiting team
members:
• professionally, they seek to gain insights that will expand their understanding
of higher education in a global context and provide new analytical perspectives
on their own institutions and national systems; and
• personally, they are provided with an opportunity to visit a part of the world of
interest to them.
The leaders of the host institution who choose to request a team of Visiting
Advisors also have multiple expectations from such a visit. Such expectations include,
but are not limited to:
• the promotion of administrative improvement (e.g., in budgeting and revenue
procurement, human resource management, and the development of technology
in higher education);
• the fostering of academic advancement (e.g., through interdisciplinary
programming, instructional approaches, and international linkages);
• political enhancement (e.g., internally through legitimatising developments
promoted by institutional leaders, and externally through credibility accorded
by governmental authorities);
• profile raising (e.g., by scheduling press conferences and media interviews with
Visiting Advisors); and
• status building (e.g., through this visible linkage to the prestigious Salzburg
Seminar).
In order to help facilitate the host institution in attaining these goals, John Davies
(Anglia Polytechnic University, UK) identified four elements of the VAP advisor role:
• Mirror: reflecting back views of the organization and its phenomena
• Revealer: identification of possible shortcomings in the institution against
either its declared mission/strategy or international good practice, or both
• Resource: presentation of information from other settings
• Catalyst: inspiration to institution to consider different approaches
TOWARD IMPROVEMENT AND CONTINUATION
From the outset, this has been an experimental program, and adaptations and
improvements to the organizational process were made as lessons learned were put
into practice. For example, during initial visits:
• the consultant team learned that it should receive more, and focused,
preliminary information both about the host institution itself and its specific
institutional concerns;