With the presence of several rectors and representatives of education in the region, a meeting of the Higher Education Cluster was held this Thursday at the UIS, in which projects such as the education observatory and the strengthening of this cluster to promote integration and collaboration between educational institutions, companies, government entities and other organizations, as well as the positioning of Santander as an academic destination, were put on the table.
This cluster seeks to transform and strengthen the educational system, positioning Santander as a reference in innovation and academic quality.
Bibiana Alexandra López Acevedo, executive director of Unired, explained that the Cluster “is a relationship between all the actors of the education ecosystem, higher education institutions, companies, government sector and the entire community in general. This economic reality already exists, but as Santander citizens and through UNIRED, our directors have been thinking that we need to mobilize many more actors, that we really generate impact projects, that we solve the needs of the region and that we continue to tell Colombians and the world that Santander is a region of knowledge generation, that we have high quality, solid institutions, with all the necessary conditions to train the human talent that will transform the region and the future”.
During the meeting, the participants discussed how to promote priority projects for the region, as Juan Camilo Montoya Bossi, rector of the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, announced.
“One, the Santander Education Observatory. To the extent that we have more information, better data and more analysis of the entire educational reality of the department, we will promote more public policy, more attraction to the region of new student talent. A second project aims to strengthen the initiative that will allow us to move forward with various projects, but we are in the initial organizational phase”.
And the third project, ‘Santander as an academic destination’: “the reality of education in Santander is indisputable, of high quality, where we have higher levels of access and that is very positive. This dynamic seeks to enhance and raise the visibility of the social and economic importance of the entire educational reality of Santander, both in basic and secondary education as well as in higher education. So, the cluster will feed that reality and that competitive advantage that we have today”.
In the middle of the meeting, very important messages of support were received from the Secretary of Education of the Department and the Secretary of Education of Bucaramanga.
María Paola Suárez, Secretary of Education of Santander, said that it is “very important to tell the educational community that as the Government of Santander we have always been hand in hand with Unired, hand in hand with the Education Cluster, with the seven educational institutions that make up Unired; we hope, of course, with the others that are also part of the Cluster. There were two strategic axes worked today, one was the strengthening of the Cluster itself, and two, to move forward, to start with the structuring of the Education Observatory that allows us to have important reference sources not only at the level of higher education institutions, secondary education institutions, but also, of course, for the industrialization of the department of Santander as a destination for knowledge so that those institutions and those companies can really know the offer in terms of knowledge that this fantastic department has”.
These meetings not only represent a significant advance in the collaboration and strengthening of the education sector in the region, but also mark a crucial step towards a more prosperous future, supported by the Higher Education Cluster, which promises to be a national and international reference in educational innovation and sustainable development, consolidating Santander as an epicenter of academic excellence and progress.
