Six Months of VITAL: From Needs Analysis to Implementation

The international project VITAL – Virtual Innovation and Training for Advancing Faculty Leaders, Digital Competencies, and Research Excellence has been underway for six months. The project is being implemented within the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchanges programme: VITAL project website

The international consortium, coordinated by the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), brings together partners from Spain, Italy, Georgia, and Ukraine to develop the professional capacity of early-career academics and support sustainable change in higher education systems.

The first stage of VITAL follows the principle:

Analyze → Strengthen → Improve → Integrate

After the first six months of work, we already have several important results:

🔹 Institutional capacity assessment has been completed, helping to identify the strengths and competency gaps of the partner institutions.

🔹 A regional needs analysis has been conducted. We collected 1,230 responses from lecturers and representatives of the academic communities of Ukraine and Georgia.

🔹 The study covered four key areas: academic leadership, soft skills, digital pedagogy, artificial intelligence, and research competencies. The findings will serve as the basis for further development of VITAL training programmes and the competency framework.

🔹 A peer mentoring model has been developed and finalized. It provides online support for early-career academics from experienced colleagues at European partner institutions.

Importantly, all activities planned within the project’s work packages are being implemented according to the approved schedule. This creates a solid foundation for the next stages of VITAL. We continue our journey — from analyzing needs to putting solutions into practice.

For TNMU, participation in VITAL is an opportunity to create new conditions for the professional growth of academic staff, develop a culture of collaboration, and support emerging academic leaders. After all, at the heart of any educational transformation is the individual — their development, potential, professional freedom, and ability to shape the future of the academic community.

We sincerely thank all VITAL partners and participants for their professionalism, openness to cooperation, and shared commitment to transforming the academic environment.

Together, we are creating new opportunities for the development of academic staff and future academic leaders!