Dear Students, on behalf of the TEMA+ Consortium, I would like to thank you for your patience andkind understanding during the past few months for getting the final decision about thestart of the TEMA+ programme in September 2020. This long waiting and rapidly changing circumstances due to the COVID-19 have been extremely challenging for all of us and making this decision was no doubt the most difficult one to make in the history of our programme. Following a careful monitoring and discussion of the situation caused by the coronavirus and by taking into consideration all the recent political, travel and visa implications in our countries, I regret to confirm you that the TEMA+ Consortium members voted for the postponement of the start of your intake (the 2020-2022 Student edition) by one academic year (until the 1 September 2021).

As we emphasized in our earlier communications, the start and continuation of the project was highly dependent of the successful visa application of all Partner country students of the intake. Furthermore, in light of the current sanitary situation and university regulations, teaching could only start in an online form at most of our member universities. We found that these new and unwelcome circumstances would not only prevent Partner country students to successfully apply for their visa and to travel to Hungary until the start of the academic year, but also would risk and compromise the proper implementation of our excellence programme. The goal of the Consortium, first and foremost, is to provide a safe environment, an inclusive, accessible study and mobility programme with high quality services to each of our students. We believe that the postponement of the start of your student edition would give a chance to all students to apply for their visas and to our countries to cope with the global pandemic.

Certainly, the main and conditional Erasmus Mundus scholarship offers and self-funded student status remain valid for the academic years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 and we would be honoured for having you in the programme from 1 September 2021. The ranking list for the original 2020 intake will also be the same for both the main and reserve list that will be published on our website on next week. By knowing well how deeply this forced decision and the pandemic situation are affecting your lives and future plans, we would like to ask you to confirm to us, if you are still willing to keep your main and conditional scholarship offers and TEMA+ status for 2021-2022 as soon as possible, but no later than 31 October 2020. In case of eventual cancellations on the main list of scholarship holders, we will immediately inform the next student on the reserve lists. In case there wouldn’t remain enough number of candidates on the reserve lists, the Consortium will launch a new call for applications for the targeted scholarship places.

After all these uncertainties and challenges, we would like to invite you to gather for an online meeting (on Mycrosoft Teams, Zoom or Skype), where you could get introduced to each other and get answers to your first questions directly from the Consortium Coordinator, Ms. Lilla Zámbó. The online meeting would take place on next Wednesday, 22 July 2020 from 5pm (CET). Please, send an email to Ms. Zámbó to confirm your participation on the meeting until Monday, 20 July 2020 and she will give you further information.

Finally, let me thank you again for your understanding, patience and interest in our programme and we are looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Gábor Sonkoly
Dean
Faculty of Humanities
Eötvös Loránd University
TEMA+ Scientific Coordinator and Project Manager

JUNE 2020

Update: The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), Brussels have accepted the postponement and grant amendment request of the TEMA+ Consortium in August 2020.

By NO Comment November 6, 2020