In order to achieve these objectives, innovative actions across four dimensions were selected by partners:
• Critical assessment of working environment and incentives for internationally competitive research,
• Training sessions for faculty’s staff focusing on methodological and theoretical topics, particularly in the realm of quantitative methods,
• Bilateral exchange of staff between partners to stimulate joint research activities and broaden personal networks, and
• International Summer Schools enabling participants to deal with advanced theoretical and methodological concepts in an applied way.
More specifically, more than 35 scientists from the four partners engaged in at least one of the actions. The following selected results underline the productive and stimulating incentives directly or indirectly initiated by the actions:
- The project stimulated a reflection process about research evaluation within the faculty. A self-evaluation of the organizational structure of the faculty was conducted, in order to identify the institutional challenges. Subsequently, the faculty assessed several quality management tools in research and started an implementation process for the most suitable ones.
- A staff survey was conducted among agricultural economists in all four countries generating insights into aspects like individual research interests, preferences for specific tasks, demand for additional qualification, and an assessment of working conditions and technical support. Results show that work satisfaction hardly differs between respondents.
- The partners elaborated together several third-party funding proposals, some of them putting USAMV into the lead position.
- A number of 12 training sessions were conducted by the international partners with a total number of 233 participants. Each international partner focused on a specific topic in the broad realm of agricultural economics. These training sessions complemented individual, bi- and multilateral scientific training exercises and joint research in the framework of staff exchange and mentorship activities. Written learning materials and online tools were developed to facilitate study and exchange in-between sessions;
- A total of 63.25 months of staff exchange has been conducted and continued after the exchange in the form of a mentorship program:
o 20 stays of Romanian staff in partners’ institutions have been organised, allowing a joint active involvement in running research projects, bringing together researchers from USAMV, AGROSCOPE, BOKU and IAMO.
o 15 stays of partners’ staff have been implemented at USAMV, allowing the active involvement in running research projects and teaching activities;
- Several joint publications have been developed of which up to early 2019 14 papers were accepted and published by international peer-reviewed journals.
- Partners developed a long-term concept and operational realization of an International Summer School targeting especially problems of agricultural development in Central and Eastern Europe. The Summer School took place three times over the lifetime of the project and attracted more than 50 junior researchers. The four partners will continue this Summer School in the future while increasing the active involvement of lecturers from USAMV.
All the implemented actions have been widely disseminated to the scientific and agri-business environment and to the policy makers. An impressive number of Dissemination & Communication (D&C) activities were carried out by all the partners during the implementation of the project using websites, social media, conference presentations, posters and bilateral talks
