With the purpose of strengthening the relevance, quality, and inclusion of higher education in Colombia, the Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS), Universidad de los Llanos, the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and the Ministry of National Education inaugurated this Monday the National Meeting on Health and Wellbeing, held at the main campus of Universidad de los Llanos in Villavicencio.
This event is part of the project “Academic Communities that Transform Territories”, an initiative of the Ministry of National Education executed by UIS, which seeks to organize and manage academic communities in six areas of knowledge: engineering, industry and construction; natural sciences, mathematics and statistics; information and communication technologies; health and wellbeing; social sciences, journalism and information; and education.
The goal is to advance towards the territorialization of educational offerings and the internationalization of curricula, aligning higher education with the social, productive, scientific, and technological needs of the country.
During the opening, Alexandra Cortés, Director of Planning at UIS, highlighted that this is the second of six national meetings that will take place in different regions of the country:
“This project is an initiative of the Ministry of National Education that UIS supports with an academic and methodological team. Through these meetings, we seek for academic communities to design action plans and recommendations to territorialize higher education in Colombia,” she stated.
The first national meeting, focused on the engineering, industry, and construction community, was held at UIS in Barrancabermeja. This week, on September 29 and 30, the second meeting is taking place at Universidad de los Llanos in Villavicencio, and on October 2 and 3 the third meeting will be hosted by Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín.
Lina Vanessa Guavita, representative of the Ministry of National Education, emphasized the importance of listening to the territories:
“We want these spaces not to be sporadic, but to become living communities that continue building collective proposals with quality and relevance,” she pointed out.
The meeting in Villavicencio is academically coordinated by Professor Juan Pablo Álvarez Najar (Universidad de los Llanos) and Professor Mauricio Torres Tovar (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), with the support of the UIS team, which brings expertise in management and methodology.
Finally, Charles Robin Arosa Carrera, Rector of Universidad de los Llanos, expressed his gratitude for the institution being chosen as host to discuss health and wellbeing, stressing:
“Health implies a great responsibility because it is directly related to human life. These dialogues are essential to ensure that the educational offerings in this field are of high quality and relevant to the territories.”
Rafael Malagón Oviedo, Dean of Dentistry at the National University, participated as a special guest in this second session.
The National Meeting on Health and Wellbeing will run until September 30 and will bring together representatives from the education sector, the productive sector, and civil society to advance in building higher education that is more equitable and connected to the realities of the country.
