Thanks to the inter-university project U.S. - Chile University Partnerships Program, four universities in the south of Chile are strengthening their skills regarding respective internationalization strategies.

As a part of the U.S. - Chile University Partnerships Program, a delegation of the UFRO participated in the first session of activation and development of capabilities to achieve the internationalization of universities in the south of Chile.

The director of the International Affairs Office, Dr. Pamela Leal, was the leader of the UFRO delegation that got to now the best practices to design and implement internationalization strategies with US-American institutions, presented by three outstanding expert speakers in processes of internationalization.

“This is the first time that our university participates in such a workshop with professionals and academics of several fields: technology transfer, strategic planning, communications and international affairs. This helps us to reduce the natural gaps between understanding internationalization and finding ambassadors to implement the strategies inside our university with a comprehensive and transversal point of view,” Dr. Pamela Leal commented.

During the three days of work, the main objective was to understand the comprehensive model of internationalization that sees this issue as a central point in the tasks of a university and wants to stop the idea of isolated silos, which is very common in the university system.

“For me, the most valuable thing was to get to know the model of internationalization and its dimensions of action that invites all the members of our university community to be agents, promoters and initiators of internationalization, designing a road map that takes the best practices, the proper competencies of the institution and the questions of why to internationalize and for what, into account,” Carola Espinoza, the director of the Communications Office, said.

Dr. Ricardo Herrera, the director of the Office for Institutional Analysis and Development, commented that, in his opinion, the most valuable of the workshop was to “confirm that the one-dimensional models and compartmentalization are not sufficient to show the complexity of internationalization at a university. It needs a holistic, comprehensive and systematic approach, apart from a clear policy direction in this field.”

The executive director for International Projects and coordinator of the program Connecting of the Office for Innovation and Technology Transfer at the UFRO, Janina Hanswillemenke, assured: “The experience of the United States in the fields of international relations and international research provides us the opportunity to implement a comprehensive and holistic model of internationalization at our university that does not only connect the internal units that are involved in the field of internationalization, but also concentrates on the generation of strategic networks with valuable external entities, such as, for example, international universities or financial establishments.”

The workshop took place from December 11 to 13, 2018, at the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción in Chile, with participation of delegations of the universities Universidad Bío Bío, Universidad Austral, Universidad de La Frontera and Universidad Católica de Santa María (Peru).