The challenges of teaching are the number one mission function of the Universidad Industrial de Santander. For this reason, some time ago, the UIS Teaching Mission 2030 was launched, an initiative conceived from the analysis of the current challenges of higher education, which seeks to strengthen the pedagogical relationship between teachers and students, preserve the institutional identity and adapt teaching to the new technological and social realities.
It was precisely this mission that, this Friday morning, was presented to the UIS professors, as has already been done with the professors and other members of the university community.
During the meeting, held in the Luis A. Calvo Auditorium, the professors expressed their satisfaction before these spaces in favor of the university’s educational quality.
“Finding these explanations and this form of treatment that we teachers should have in the classroom has been quite interesting to me because I personally had never had it in the way they have been explaining it today in the morning. It seems to me that this is something that should be done every semester, inviting professors and lecturers to learn how the academic management as a professor is in front of the student and how the student reacts to what is developed daily in each of the subjects that the professors are in charge of”, said Alejandro Parra Santos, UIS pensioner, professor of the School of Economics.
From the classrooms, the UIS Teaching Mission seeks not only a better academic environment, but also a more inclusive education that promotes the permanence of students at the university.
Sisters Luisa, Claudia and Liliana Hernández Valdivieso, professors of the School of Languages, as well as of Law and Political Science UIS, expressed that they consider it very important to work in these spaces with which they seek to identify particular strategies to meet the different challenges associated with the improvement of the mission of teaching.
“I think it is very important, of course, that within the mission there is inclusion, because it means that the university opened the doors for different needs and that these barriers are being broken so that students within society or at the level of society, culture, arts, different contexts have access and can count on, not only with this inclusion, but with interpretation services to communicate, especially specifically in this, because one makes sign language courses for students to be interested, prepare and see a favorable future construction for the university and open doors for the rest.
It is worth remembering that this Teaching Mission UIS 2030, has four challenges: the first has to do with the person of the teacher and the person of the student and how they interact in the pedagogical relationship.
The second challenge is the identification of the UIS imprint, “we know that professors have a very special way of working, of relating, of doing our teaching at the UIS, we want to identify what these characteristics are in the work we do,” said Professor Lola Bautista, from the School of Systems Engineering.
The third is focused on the appropriation of the student-centered model, student-centered teaching, “what strategies to incorporate so that all professors can appropriate this model”.
And finally, the fourth challenge is “how we identify the paradigms of the global context that affects us and how we affect the external sector with our training”.
UIS Teaching Mission 2030 is already a reality and its implementation has begun. It is expected that a document will be prepared to serve as a guide for professors in the coming years, ensuring that teaching at the UIS continues to be aligned with its essence and global challenges.
