Minutes of the fourth (final) management meeting for the Tempus project entitled (Capacity Building ofPersonnel in Jordanian Olive Industry) (543820 TEMPUS-1-2013-1JO-TEMPUS-JPHES (2013/001-001))

Date: 26- 27/ 4/ 2017 (Wednesday – Thursday)

Place: The University of Jordan

The attendance

Dr. Mehyar Ghadeer, Dr. Chartzoulakis Kostas, Dr. PsarrasGeorgios;‎ Prof. Favati Fabio, Dr. Nenadis Nikos on behalf of Prof. Tsimidou Maria, Dr. Rodriguez Celia on behalf of Prof . Segura-Carretero Antonio, Prof. RababahTaha, Prof.AL- Absi Khalid, Dr. AL-RousanWalid, Ms. DaghmishRuba, and Eng.Al-MomaniSamar.

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The agenda

1. Presentation about the project regarding its aims, activities and accomplishments - Dr. Mehyar Ghadeer

2. Briefing from Prof RababahTaha, Prof. Al-AbsiKhalid, and Dr. AL-RousanWalid about the established laboratories in their universities.

3. Reviewing the final report  

4. Overview the financial report

5. General discussion by the partners about difficulties faced the project and closing remarks

The minutes

Wednesday 26^th April 2017

The meeting started at the Department Nutrition and Food Technology/ The University of Jordan at 10:00 amand ended at 6:00 pm(Amman time).

The 1^st session:

1. Presentation about the project regarding its aims, activities and accomplishments - Dr. Mehyar Ghadeer

Dr. Mehyar provided one hour presentation entitled “Report on implementation of the project Capacity Building of Personnel in Jordanian Olive Industry“, in which she gave briefing about the following headings:

- The significance of the project

- Project highlights

- The grant and budget distribution

- The six work packages and the 20 deliverable

- Implementation of each work plan and deliverables.

- Completion of work plan and deliverables.

Prof.Favatihighlighted the following two comments on the presentation

1.                 The website is not easily accessible through Google search in the internet and this is important when the final report is evaluated in Brussels. Dr. Mehyar mentioned that this is because the title of the page was in photo then it was changed to text but it could need further fixation. The other problem is that the links in the website are not working. Dr. Mehyar mentioned that this technical problem could be easily fixed because by deleting the letter “s” in the address box of the link it works.Dr. Mehyar promised to contact the computer center to follow these problems and fix them.Prof. Favati suggestedto changethe website provider to one outside the university, since this could make the website easily accessible in future and it will not cost a lot (~ 50Eur/year). Dr. Mehyar informed the meeting that hostingthe website at the Universitywebsite will be free forever and long lasting on which no partner shown objection.

2.                  Prof. Favati asked what could be the proof of evidence to Brussels about the accomplishment of the deliverable “Course development”. Dr. Mehyar answeredthat the courses were existing but the teaching materials were oriented during the life time of the projecton table olives and olive oil.Partners agreed that the final report should contain a link to the syllabus of the oriented courses.Dr. Mehyar added that establishingMSc.programin “Olive Production and Processing” is not listed in the original proposal or in the work plan butdeveloping olive related courses to be oriented towards olive and olive oil. Such activity will aid in supporting and strengthening the M.Sc. program that is started in 2014/2015. Therefore establishing MSc. program  is outside the activities of the projectbut wasintroducedon the website of the project as an advertisement for the program.

2. Briefing from Prof. Rababah Taha, Prof. Al-Absi Khalid, and Dr. AL-Rousan Walid about the established laboratories in their universities.

2.1. Prof. Rababah mentioned in his presentation that he used less that 3000 Eurfrom the 10000 Euro allocated in the budget of the project for establishing the sensory evaluation laboratory at JUST,and the rest of expenditure was from JUST as co-financing. He added that the total cost of establishing the laboratories was about 10 000Eur which was paid from the university.Partners agree on Prof. Favati idea that all equipments bought from the project and listed in the financial reportseven the co-financing onesshould be related to olives and olive oil analysis.

2.2. Prof.AL- Absi briefed that instruments bought for the sensorylaboratory will be moved within 6-8 monthsto the newly established building in the university. He added that the currently used laboratory consisted of two rooms; one is used for sensory evaluation and the second for chemical analysis. Prof. Absiinformed the meeting that MUbought a spectrophotometer as a co-financing with a value of 9900 JDs or about 12500 Eur. 

2.3. Dr. AL-Rousan mentioned that BAU have a soxhletap paratus and HPLC to be moved to the newly establishedchemical analysis laboratory. A photometer was bought in part from the project and the other part as co-financing from the university. This instrument is used for measuring acidity, peroxide and polyphenol in olives.Prof. Favati informed that the instrument might be difficult to use because of the small volumes to be handled in order to perform the analyses; furthermore, measuring the polyphenols level in olive oils might be not so accurate especially in oils very rich in such components.Another disadvantage is that it needs special reagents to run the analysisand they are only sold from the manufacturer company so the test could be expensive taking into consideration that each sample represented by 2-3 replicates. Dr. AL-Rousaninformed the partners that BAU has made a contract with the company tosupply the reagents.

3. Reviewing the final report  

Dr. Mehyar mentioned the currently reviewed report is the one that was originally written by Prof.Alsaed then revised by each of the partners (in order): AUTH, ELGO, UGR, UNIVRthen UJ (by Dr. Mehyar). The following points were highlighted during reviewing the final report:

3.1. Seminars and workshops: Prof. Favati highlighted the question which is about whetherthe governmental employees can be trained in the workshops or they can participate in providing training to other people. .Dr. Mehyar, Prof. Taha and Prof. Al-Absi agreed on the answer that they can be trained but not give training to other people since this should be only for the partners.

3.2. The acceptance of the paper for publication in the Italian journal “La Rivista talianadelle Sostanze Grasse”:Prof. Rababah mentioned that the paper was accepted as short notebut not as a full paper. Prof. Favati asked Dr. Mehyar to send the partners a copy of the accepted version of the paper and the acceptance letter and these documents to be included in the final report. Dr. Mehyar informed the partners that the second part of the study (after the training assessment)was presented by Prof. Alsmael in the final workshop of the project in his presentation entitled “Some chemical characteristics of olive oil of the Nabali cultivar growing in Jordan”.

3.3. Staff and students’mobility: Dr. Nenadis and Dr. Chartzoulakis suggested including some details about activities performed during each staff exchange andsome of these activities are already included within the partners’ progress reports. Dr. Psarras suggested also including the programs of staff exchange.

About the official recognition of EU students in their visit to Jordan, Prof. Favatimentioned that at the University of Verona, the period (2 – 12 weeks) of the visit is recognized as one credit hour and he can provide an official letter issued by the UNVIRto proof this recognition. Dr. Mehyar asked to send her any document that proves this recognition and she mentioned that this type of recognition is not followed at the UJ, but it is allowed for the graduate students to do part of theirpractical work for research in other universities.

3.4. Course development: Prof. Favati read the agreement signed between the Brussels and UJ (WP 3)in which it is stated that“The visiting lectures (EU or Jordanian) should have visits for 3-4 weeks for working on developing of four courses related to olives and olive oil chemistry, sensory properties and technology; two of them are for undergraduate level and other two for the graduate level”. Prof. Favati, Dr. Chartzoulakis and Dr. Nenadis agreed that EU partners were asked by Prof. Alsaed about the MSc. program in “Olive Production and Processing” and provided their contribution considering the contents they received, as well as some suggestions about updating. Prof. Favati asked to have an evidence for the developed courses like syllabus before and after the developing and Dr. Mehyar asked the partners to send a copy of the emails that were sent to the partners by Prof. Alsaed in this regards.

3.5. Website of the project: Dr. Mehyar informed the partners that the electronic library that contain only the title of the articles, the abstract, the references, the keywords and a link to the publisher is now introduced on the website.Dr. Psarras reminded the coordinator that the website should not have an open accessto the teaching materials of the workshops and this should be protected with passwords to be given only to the trainees or these materials should just be deleted on which Dr. Mehyar promised to be done.

3.6. Disseminating activities:Dr. Nenadis mentioned thatat the AUTH they have done some dissemination activities using promotional material as well and that will be shown in the final version of the report that will be sent to the coordinator. These activities are supported with a link to the AUTH website whichalso shows some photos for these activities. Dr. Mehyar informed the partners that the dissemination activities that were carried out by Prof. Alsaed in behalf of the project were uploaded on the project website and a link for these activities will be introduced in the final report.

3.7. Management and quality control: Partners asked Dr. Mehyar the following to be done and included in the final report:

a. Translated minutes to English for all the local meetings (total 31 meetings) that were conducted by the Jordanian partners andto be singed again by the attendees.

b. Answers of a short question nairetobe sent to trainees asking them to provide their feedback about thebenefits they could gain in their professional work from attendingthe training workshops.  Also to includein the report some statistics about trainees’ performance in the test conducted at the end of each workshop and the evaluation they conducted at the end of each workshop.

c. Signedcooperation agreement(s) between the non-academic partners (e.g. JOPEA and JSSEF) and the UJ so as to be implemented after the end of project.

d. A list of names for the accredited sensory evaluation team, (by JSMO) that took thesensory evolution training workshop in the project and passed the Ministry of Agriculture secondaryevaluation exam.

e. The reasons from all partners for not providing training/teaching in partners’ countries or 2-3 weeks in roll as stated in the proposal.

f. Progress reports for the partners every six months of the project; the total amount of reports should be three to seven for each partner.

g. A list of electronic office equipments brought for the project.

h. ELGO’s link to the website that announcing about holding the final workshop.

It was also stressed that UJ will consider carefully the tables in the final report regarding the qualitative/quantitative indices

Thursday, 27^thApril 2017, the 2^nd session

The meeting started at the Department Nutrition and Food Technology/ The University of Jordan at 8:00 am and ended at 4:00 pm (Amman time).

4. Overview the financial report

4.1. The coordinator reviewed the financial reports with each partners. Prof. Favati advised Dr. Mehyar to send a letter to all partners just before the end of May (31^st) to inform them to send their documents at pre-determined period of time, taking into consideration that the external auditor cannot start his work before the end date of the project and providing the complete documents.

4.2. Both Prof. Favati and Dr. Nenadis indicated that Prof. Alsael increased their universities’ portions in the total budget including the co-finance and send them an email to approvethe increase.

4.3. Prof. Favati listed the financial problems of UNVIR as follows:

a.The distribution of categories and days assigned to UNVIR doesn’t match thoseperformed during the project life time for most work plans e.g. some of the taskshas been done as management but not as researcher.Dr. Psarrasand Dr. Nenadis stated that their universities shareUNVIR the same problem. Prof. Favatiand Dr. Nenadis told the coordinator that they asked Prof. Alsaedto change days-distribution on some work plans, and after communications with him, some issues, but not all, were resolved.

b. The other problem is that in the UNVIR, the money from EU projectsis not paid as top up and paid at the university rate. Therefore the used rate is usually higher than the rates assigned by the Tempus for the researcher and administrator categories but not for the manager. Partners providedsome advices to solve this problem. Dr. Mehyar reminded Prof.Favati to prepare a letter of mandate from the salary as co-finance.Prof. Favatipromised to show the financial officer what was suggested on their financial report.

4.4. Dr. Psarras promised to send the coordinator the co-financing table for ELGO at the end of May and he mentioned that the co-financing from ELGO will exceed the requested amount.

4.5. Dr. Nenadis mentioned that AUTH will send the scientific report (Nov 2016 - May 2017) and financial reportsafter finishing working on them.

4.6. Prof. Rababah, mentioned that all the supporting documents for JUST are completed but signing and stamping the conversion, time sheets and the individual mobility reportswill be done ASAP.

4.7. Prof.AL- Absi mentioned that all the supporting documents for MU are completed except some little amount of documents andsigning and stamping the conversion, the time sheets and the individual mobility reports andthat will be done ASAP.

4.8. Dr. AL-Rousan mentioned that his university asks for sending the amount of money to cover the cost of the photometer. Dr. Mehyar informed him to cover the co-financing required from his university then she will send the money.

4.9. Ms. Daghmish mentioned that she got the second installation and she has no problem with the report.  Eng. Al-Momani mentioned the co-financing is ready but there are some mistakes in the receipts and she will complete them next week and send them to the project officer.

5. General discussion by the partners about difficulties faced the project and closing remarks