President

The EQAR President chairs the General Assembly, the Executive Board and the Register Committee, represents EQAR externally and ensures coherence in the work of the EQAR bodies.

Stéphane Lauwick: EQAR President since 1 July 2023

Former Secretary-General of ADIUT and President of EURASHE,

Stéphane was elected as President of EQAR at the General Assembly in Stockholm, on 10 May 2023. Stéphane is EQAR’s second elected president and started his three-year mandate on 1 July 2023.

Stéphane Lauwick has extensive experience not only in the French higher education sector, at the University Institute of Technology (IUT) in Le Havre, but also at a European level, as former President of EURASHE.

He was also, until very recently Secretary-General of the French network of University Institutes of Technology, ADIUT. In this capacity, he promoted the French Institutes of Technology, mainly outside Europe and worked with a variety of stakeholders.

Stéphane Lauwick can be reached via the following email: stephane.lauwick@eqar.eu.

More about Stéphane Lauwick here

Responsibilities and terms of office

The President has a three year mandate – renewable once – and is elected by the General Assembly.

The President has responsibility for the leadership of the whole organisation within the frame set by the General Assembly and refined through decisions of the Board and the Register Committee.

In particular, the President:

Chairs the Board, the Register Committee and the General Assembly.
Represents EQAR externally at high-level meetings and events.
Ensures coherence in the work of all EQAR bodies.

The President acts as the legal representative of EQAR and is supported by the Director and the Secretariat.

Background and nomination

Appointing an EQAR President was one of the recommendations in EQAR’s external evaluation of 2011 “the General Assembly should appoint a high profile, independent President capable of raising the visibility and promoting the benefits of EQAR with key stakeholders”.

The statutory changes by the General Assembly of 12 April 2017 made the appointment of an EQAR President possible.

After the appointment of a Selection Committee (composed by representatives of Governmental Members (4), Founding Members (2), Social Partner Member (1), the Executive Board (2) and the Register Committee (2)), the selection process starts with a public call for expressions of interest.

After a rigorous procedure, EQAR members are then invited to elect an EQAR president based on a proposal by the Selection Committee.

Karl Dittrich: EQAR President from 2017 until 2023

Karl was the first EQAR President and served two mandates

Karl Dittrich was Executive Chairman, ad interim, of the Open University (Netherlands) in 2020/2021. Before that, Karl was Chair of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), until October 2017.

He started his career as a political science researcher and lecturer in Leiden, Florence and Maastricht. He chaired the Executive Board of the University of Maastricht from the 1990s until the early 2000s.

Karl Dittrich was the inaugural chairman of the Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) from 2005 to 2012. In that capacity, he also held functions on the ENQA Board and in the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA). As VSNU Chairman, Dittrich has also sat on the Council of EUA.

Karl was first elected as EQAR President on 25 May 2017, at the 13th General Assembly in Malta. More about that GA and the election. He was then re-elected in 2020. All about Karl’s re-election.

Check out Karl’s and EQAR’s achievements during his two mandates