Notes from the 2009 EAIR Forum
Bill Knight, AIR Immediate Past President (wknight@bgsu.edu)

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the European Association for Institutional Research Forum held in Vilnius, Lithuania on August 23-26, 2009. The Forum theme of “Fighting for Harmony - Students, Society and the Academy in Tune” was very appropriate to describe myriad issues discussed there, which included quality, governance, administration, students, learning paradigms, research management, ethics, the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Reforms, internationalization, rankings, assessment, benchmarking, graduate education, the academic workforce, effective teaching, enrollment management, institutional diversity, and partnerships.

While many of the issues are the same as those we are facing, the context was sufficiently different to make the discussions fresh and interesting. Participants were from 18 European nations as well as Australia, Canada, India, Japan, South Africa, and the USA. In addition to meeting many new colleagues, I saw some familiar faces there as well, including Vic Borden, Trudy Banta, Anne Marie Delaney, and Susan Kahn.

The discussions and networking made this an excellent professional development opportunity that I would highly recommend. Details about next year’s Forum in Valencia, Spain are available at http://www.eair.nl/forum/valencia/Welcome.asp