Good news comes from the province. This Tuesday, the Universidad Industrial de Santander presented to the Academic Council the proposal for the creation of the Veterinary Medicine program at its headquarters in Malaga, an initiative that represents a strategic impulse for regional development and the training of professionals committed to animal welfare and the rural environment.
The new program would have a duration of eight semesters and is projected to have an admission capacity of approximately 60 students per cohort. As explained by Professor Gonzalo Alberto Patiño, director of the Institute for Regional Projection and Distance Education (IPRED) of the UIS, this proposal responds to specific needs of the region.
“It has a very important territorial impact because it is added to the two programs that we have traditionally had at our headquarters, the Animal Husbandry and Forestry Engineering programs. So, in a way, an institutional commitment to agricultural sciences is taking shape over time and why not, thinking in the future of a faculty that gives coherence to all this commitment to agricultural issues at the regional and territorial level for Colombia, for the region and for Santander, is very important.
“What we are looking for is for the UIS Malaga campus to become a center of agricultural sciences,” said Professor Julian Botero, a professor at the campus. “This Veterinary Medicine program is part of the approach we want to give to the region, with a novel proposal that articulates key disciplines of agricultural science.”
For her part, Deisy Dalila Delgado Díaz, coordinator of the UIS Málaga campus, emphasized that this is a pioneering proposal in Colombia: “This would be the first eight-semester Veterinary Medicine program in the country. It is a very important step forward for the campus and for the province, because it strengthens our capabilities and is committed to comprehensive training adapted to the dynamics of the territory”.
The program not only represents an academic innovation, but is accompanied by a key infrastructure for its development: in Malaga the construction of the first Veterinary Clinic in the region, led by the UIS, is progressing, which will integrate theoretical training with practice in a real context.
After the presentation to the Academic Council, several academic-administrative units of the university have expressed their interest in generating alliances to strengthen this proposal, adding capabilities from other areas of knowledge, especially from the health sector.
Thus, the UIS once again demonstrates that its presence in the regions is not only institutional, but also transformative: an education designed from the territory and for the territory, with a real impact on the sustainable development of the García Rovira province.
