Pradeep Eranti
Fernanda Bajanca
Pradeep Eranti
Lidia Natalia Trusilewicz
Still very foggy ...
First of all congratulations to the Board, I really like it because it is really international and representing almost all the continents, Snezana is very active and I'm sure she will be a great Chair! Good luck!!
Apart of that I see the MCAA very nebulous and foggy. Many things were unclear from the beginning and, if it is possible they are, much more obscure now!
Well, the MCAA GA should be an assembly of Marie Curie fellows and we (as fellows) did not get any possibility to discuss, even a coffee break was more important than the discussion. The coffee breaks are nice and important for networking, but not for discussing about common problems.
If we want an association working it has to be participated, all the members must be involved and without any communication and transparency there will not be participation.
There are many things that I still must understand.
We came to Brussels mainly for 2 reasons: to elect the Board and approving the statute.
The statute was ready since some time ago, but when I asked in this forum if it was possible to see and discuss it before the meeting the reply was that we were going to see it just at the GA, really fair!
When I asked why the statute was not discussed with the Marie Curie Fellow the reply was that it was too difficult to contact all the members, as researcher I would say that everything is difficult if you do not try ...
Ok the statute is probably legally correct, but the content is mainly garbage. Many things should be changed, but it seems it is difficult to change it!! So we will probably keep it as it is (as someone else decided it has to be). MCAA GA is really independent!!
Now I also understand from Ana's email that the statute was approved during the MCAA GA. Did I maybe fall sleeping during the assembly?! I do not remember that we voted or approved the statute in any other way, but maybe I was really sleeping and do not remember it.
There was some issue also reported in this forum which probably deserved to be discussed and solved before the elections ... the incompatibility of MCFA Board members with their candidacy to the MCAA Board. Nobody wanted to solve the problem even though it was possible to solve it. Now, as expected, we have 3 members of MCFA Board also part of MCAA Board and the chair of MCFA is secretary of MCAA. Great! Not any conflict of interests?? This is not a fight against anybody it is just a fight for the transparency and fairness. It was too easy to be elected in the MCAA coming in 10 people already organized. Someone during the candidate presentation said that it is not fair overlapping the 2 Boards, I hope they will try do it something on this regard since I still think it is a problem, anyway at this point I guess it is objectively impossible.
When I asked what was the problem with MCFA and why we did not follow having that association (maybe with some change of the statute) instead of creating a new one, nobody replied.
When I have tried to say something during the introduction the boss told me that it was no time to talk ... like to the children, but I'm not a child and such kind of behaviour could also be offensive for a child. During the general assembly of MC Fellows I expect to hear discussion of fellows and not one way talk of someone else.
We (as candidate) knew that we had 2 minutes for presenting ourselves just the night before the elections at 22.40!! That's probably why 2 minutes of presentation were more than enough for most of the people, since they did not know that we had that opportunity.
Someone told that after created the association we were able to create any chapter and any working Group we would like to do (and this is also written in the statute) but at the GA we knew that someone already planned everything on this regard!! And we also elected 6 Board members not planned to exist from the statute ... mah!
I could follow with many other points, but I think this is already enough for understanding that the start of the association is not the best. The fog is really thick ...
6 Comments
Hi, Maria.
It was very easy. I came to the election officer and asked him about all election results after GA closing (during the photo session). I can see all results. It was absolutely open information. I had seen my numbers of votes. If you need, I hope, you can ask the Board about your numbers.
regards
Andrey
Well, I had to leave for church very fast after the GA closing because the mass was starting 17 30. I came 3 minutes late even so with the complicated Brussels streets.
But anyway I managed to tell everybody congratulations and that they will see me for last time. I am serious, I managed not to talk 10 years long with people I had an argument with in Germany until we met again on Facebook but not in life. Or one year long with people I met daily at the university. Also to my former Marie Curie host I am not talking since 2 years when he did not publish the book from my first fellowship (I published it at another publisher). I guess people are not expecting this from me as it is not fully supported by the church.
Also Mike Rogers I will never forgive for telling me already in May that I shall keep in mind the 2nd weekend in November for the MCAA GA and come to Brussels. I should have went to Vilnius to the COST meeting of the Women in Science group of the MCFA where I represented that in a COST action (it was also paid, by EEA grants under the Lithuanian presidency). Of course the persons from the COST action are also upset for not having seen me, especially since whom I sent in my place with the prepared poster felt ill and could not go.
The MCAA does not want a Women in Science group, this is something what Mike Rogers also told me already in May and it was confirmed by Ana Leal who said that working groups cannot be done as one please.
So I told Mike Rogers he will never hear from me privately again in life this is why I am writing so many posts on the wall with what I need to tell him.
I discussed the election with my colleagues at my home university and would have a load more to write but I have to run to the Ministry of Culture for a whole day meeting now.
talking about what Ana Leal said on the working groups, maybe it is interesting to add that I was 5 weeks in March-April in Portugal and she had no time to meet, even if, after clearing up EMail problems, she said she will be in Coimbra that coming week, and I was in Coimbra that coming week for a visit as well. Actually everybody got my EMails while I was there. And then the month after, in May, Mike Rogers told that we do not want to cooperate. Maybe that was what she spread after the MCFA GA in December - to me everything seemed OK there. And Mike Rogers also was upset that nobody from the MCAA was at the Eurodoc meeting in Lisbon - I was there just on a grant but I managed, while Ana Leal is living in Portugal always. Bad news for Mike Rogers: I will be on a grant in Budapest during the 2014 Eurodoc meeting and I have just arrangend to participate again. As I said him before privately, competition is good!
But anyway Mike Rogers always exchanges is me with Maria Antonietta so it will be better for him to have the correspondence separated.
you write
" If there is some lack of clarity as to why we did not support the MCFA initially, I would say this is a question that should be asked in reverse. "
Well, I think the unclarity of the MCAA members was rather why did the MCFA not receive the 600K/year for making their association better and instead a new association needed to be created.
And I've got told by Riccardo and somebody else was an eye wittness as well that EC representatives told that this was because the MCFA did not do work well enough. I mean I really worked a lot with two responsibilities which had to do workarounds for the website. But given the general atmosphere I could not talk as much about what I've done for the MCFA and prefered other NGOs. And here again the law of compensation: the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology in Germany where I graduated just contacted me, also over this weekend, to take my memories from study time in their university archive. My study in Karlsruhe was supported by my family with an initial EU TEMPUS, but from the Marie Curie grants in Italy I do not have the same echo: I am not allowed to join the alumni of the university (yes, I was denied when I applied) their because I was Marie Curie fellow and hence I am not their graduate (even if the first fellowship was for doctoral student, but it was too short for them as well, not just for the MCFA). So my family did a better investment in recognition than the EC.
And something else to Riccardo this time: the statutes about at least 1 year of fellowship were not done by the current board, just that the current board was unable to change them. This I forgot to tell on Saturday.
I still have received no answer to my question: the unclarity of fellows regarding the support of the MCFA was what is the sense of two associations if I recall it well, ie why was a new association created and not why did they not cooperate as the Commission expected in the past year.
On the top of that I would like to add that I guess the reason why it might be considered the work of the MCFA was not good is that it did not manage to improve the employability of researchers. As I told Riccardo, at the MCFA GA in 2006 when the MCFA funded accomodation in Venice one Italian fellow said me that the MCFA should not be a travel agency, but have a voice to defend mobile researchers in Italian universities who loose work places compared to inbreeding in Southern European countries. I am really curious if the MCAA manages to do better or if instead makes its glory of solving some cases (=success stories) and leave the rest in the same situation. For the begin the microgrants look like the "travel agency" issue. BTW I made more networking and am about to submit common projects with my evaluator colleagues.
I would not say that the MCFA board members were elected because of having an organised group - the ones elected also had other votes, as not all MCFA board members got elected (for example me). They must have had other votes as well. But I have a strange feeling about the election as well, since we were not given any numbers - I would have liked to know how many votes I had, if I just missed by little etc. It is overly sad to be punished because you worked hard, as all the MCFA board will agree that I worked hard, but since, as you said and somebody else testified, it was told that MCFA did bad work, probably the harder you worked, the worst for the elections. I think I will run as far as I can the Women in Science activities as MCFA and then resign and wish all the best to the MCAA to find somebody better. After all, I have work enough. It is only sad that the last tie to abroad breaks - for the future I will only represent Romania in international bodies. Just on Sunday, according to the law of compensation, I was accepted Romania correspondent for the Le Notre institute, and as I told Ana my vicedean was unhappy of me going to Brussels instead of working on the Le Notre project - I see now that she was right and it was not worth going to Brussels. I noticed before that connections abroad begin to pale, although I was 11 years abroad and just since 6 back to Romania, but now really the last tie broke.
And fellows who were not in the GA look without success on the MCAA webpage to see who is the board because it is not yet written.