On the 7th of June, 2024, Higher Education Quality Assurance Department, the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE), organized a workshop on ‘University 3rd Mission’. The workshop was led by Dr. Irma Grdzelidze who is a higher education reform expert (HERE – Erasmus + Georgia) with prominent experience in higher education internal and external quality assurance and closely cooperates with the NCEQE. 

The workshop covered interesting topics: understanding the concept of 3rd mission, quality assurance of 3rd mission activities, and the results of SQUARE project outcomes. SQUARE is European Union funded Erasmus+ project. The workshop provided much space for the participants to reflect on the concept, give examples, discuss the specificity of implementing university 3rd mission activities and most importantly, how these activities can be reflected in quality assurance context. 
The workshop is important from two perspectives: 1) raising awareness of academia of university 3rd mission, and 2) preparing local and international education experts who cooperate with the NCEQE, and who will be engaged in external institutional evaluation of higher education institutions in Georgia.

Current edition of authorization standards concentrates on the 1st mission, which is teaching and learning, the 2nd mission, which is research, and the 3rd mission, which is service to the society and engagement in the process of creation of public good.
Currently, higher education institutions are engaged in external institutional evaluation, and both local and international experts are cooperating with the NCEQE and perform evaluation on behalf of the quality assurance agency. This is why, it is essential that local and international authorization experts raise their awareness of the specificity of institutional evaluation, review their knowledge and expertise in connection to authorization procedures and agree on the approaches to be employed throughout the evaluation process.