First plenary of 2019 gave priority to the internationalization of research and curriculum
Promoting the exchange in research and curriculum, along with promoting the mobility of academics and undergraduate and graduate students were the priorities established by the Internationalization Commission of the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities, CRUCH, which held its first plenary session of 2019 in the library and deanship of the Faculty of Humanities UV.
The meeting, held over two days, brought together all the directors of International Relations of the institutions belonging to the CRUCH, including the Diego Portales and Alberto Hurtado universities, recently incorporated.
Eva Madrid, vice-rector for Liaison with the UV Environment, was in charge of inaugurating the second day and pointed out that “today the international flow of ideas, people, resources and culture makes it unthinkable that we do not internationalize in the sense of adding that dimension in teaching, research, artistic creation and innovation”.
“We have students that we send regularly to do semester studies outside the country and some Chilean universities already have offers in other languages in their study programs, so it is a great opportunity to improve and advance,” he said.
Alejandro Rodríguez, director of UV Institutional Relations and president of the CRUCH Internationalization Commission, explains that “during the plenary the decision was made to carry out a study that allows comparing the data obtained in 2015 with the present, to generate a work plan for the coming years”.
“All universities have different levels of development in this subject and the idea is to be able to share to learn from each other. In fact, we have created a repository of documents to strengthen the theoretical framework related to internationalization as a way to support and that we can all learn from the experiences of our peers,” he added.
Meanwhile, Christian Schmitz, rector of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción and rector delegate in the commission, said that “we can not continue thinking only about attracting students and training them in the country, but we also have to generate instances of interrelation with the world. We are interested in generating a benefit for all universities at the same time and not that only the main or largest institutions generate these contacts. As a higher education system, we hope to make homogeneous progress around internationalization.”
During the second day of the plenary, the commercial attaché of the Embassy of Canada, Margot Edwards, spoke about the MITACS platform, which seeks to streamline cooperation between academy and industry. “There are three programs to link universities with the productive world. The first is focused on undergraduate and consists of final year students going to Canada to do an internship under the supervision of a Canadian professor doing research; a second for mobility of postgraduate students who develop research and a third for internships in the industry, ” she said.
