Stefan is Honorary Secretary General of EURASHE, the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education, which he led from 2004-2014, and during this period he represented EURASHE in the Bologna Follow-up Group and several of its working and coordination groups. In 2014, he was elected a member of the Bureau of the Steering Committee for Education Policy and Practice at the Council of Europe.
Stefan is an educationalist, with a professional background in teaching (in-service training, higher and continuous education), and in Higher Education policies and their interaction with civil society. He graduated in Commercial Sciences and also has a MA degree in philology from the University of Gent (BE), and has acquired wide experience in working in international and intercultural environments.
Stefan specializes in policy towards and activities with partner countries of the EU (in the Tempus-TACIS & MEDA programmes). He regularly contributes to Business-Education fora and is a co-founder of the SPACE network (Business Studies and Languages), and a Member of the International Expert group, Education and Business Cooperation of the European Training Foundation (ETF). In his own country (Belgium) he is the Chair of the Jury of the Prince Philippe Fund, for inter-community dialogue and cooperation between the HEIs of the Flemish, German and French-speaking Communities of Belgium.
Stefan has wide experience in quality assurance and accreditation issues, as a member of review teams, and as the EURASHE delegate in the ‘E4’ Group (with ENQA, EUA, ESU). In this capacity he contributed to the elaboration and later the revision of the European Standards and Guidelines for QA, and was also a member of the Executive Board of EQAR, the European Register for Quality Assurance Agencies, from 2012-2014.
