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.
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 26th
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 1st 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, 27thApril
2017, the 2nd 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
(31st) 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
Prof. Favati advised the Jordanian partners to be precise in their
work for the EU projects and to let the university know that EU are very strict
on roles and notto putblame on the university in the difficulties faced the
project. This isto avoid not getting EU funded projects in future. Dr. Mehyar
mentioned that what she learned from this experiencewas that EU in the projects
is very organized in distribution of money and tasks and if she managed the
project from the beginning, she could run the project more efficiently and would
have avoided all difficulties faced. Dr. AL-Rousan mentioned that he thinks the
project was successful and had many benefits to the partners’ institutions..