Modeling of the research and education strategy in Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University

Abstract

The efficient and effective university education system is a huge benefit for individuals and for the community. The competences, innovation, and creativity developed through academic education are a major factor in the success in creating jobs and in our prosperity. As Bulgaria join EU community, it has the opportunity to act on the competition challenges and set the economy on a higher growth path. EC and World Bank proposes a strong reform agenda focused on five areas to narrow the income, productivity, and investment gaps and accelerate convergence with the EU [6]. The first of them are to improve the quantity and quality of human capital. To address this problem, we start 7FP Specific programme "Capacity" - Research potential project named SISTER - Strengthening the IST Research Capacity of Sofia University, Grant agreement no.: 205030. The first goal of the SISTER project is to achieve the following important objectives - Investigate the current state of the innovative education and research practice, develop a strategic model and write the strategy for the period 2008-2013, build the capacity of faculty and industry in the area of IT/IS management and to improve the overall efficiency and productivity of the field. The right process to create that winning strategy involves all stakeholders and will develop important in-house strategic thinking capabilities. Active participating in the Roundtable for Entrepreneurship Education (REE, http://ree.stanford.edu/), Intel-UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship initiatives (T2 seminars, Global Faculty Colloquium and Business Plan Competitions, http://www.entrepreneurshipchallenge.org/) and European Knowledge and innovation Dialogue (EKID http://www.s144764852.online.de/index.php), FMI try to follow the world's best practices and to develop competitive strategy for research and education [1,3]. The goal of the paper is to introduce and to present the model of the faculty education and research strategy and to show that modelling process of the faculty strategy through Balanced Scorecard (BSC) methodology can be useful