After several weeks of campaigning, the aspiration to bring young spirit into a significant position in higher education became a reality on Wednesday, July 24, when Natacha Pino Acuña was elected the new university rector of the University of Aysén, a Chilean state university, by the 27 authorized academic voters. The new rector elected is going to assume office on September 2, 2019 until 2023.

It is a milestone in the history of state universities in Chile and goes in hand with the current demands of the society that seek stronger presence and representativeness of women in political decision-making positions. Natacha Pino Acuña was elected the first female university rector of one of the universities that are part of the CRUCH (Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities) state universities by her peers.

She graduated in Civil Industrial Engineering from the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) in 2004 and demonstrated her commitment to the development of the regions of Chile since the beginning. This belief, which was also marked by an even greater vocation: the desire to pass her knowledge on to new generations, showed her the path that kept her more than seven years in the position of the director of the UFRO undergraduate program in Civil Industrial Engineering with specialization in Computer Science and in Bioprocesses.

She was well appreciated by her students and the academic community of the Universidad de La Frontera and as the new rector of the University of Aysén, she sustained that this new challenge she is assuming today is an important task for the present and the future. “I accept this great challenge because I strongly believe that this new way of doing things, with a collaborative and effective governance model, will convert us into an institution of excellence in the region and the country,” she said.

After several weeks of campaigning, the aspiration to bring young spirit into a significant position in higher education became a reality on Wednesday, July 24, when Natacha Pino Acuña was elected the new university rector of a Chilean state university by the 27 authorized academic voters. The Electoral Board informed that Natacha Pino got 14 votes out of 26 votes validly cast. The other 12 votes went to Maria Teresa Marshall. The new rector, elected by a majority of 53.85%, is going to assume office on September 2, 2019 until 2023.

The University of Aysén transmitted the first impressions through its channels of institutional communication. "This has been an intense process. It was a month of hard work, designing the proposal together with my academic colleagues. It is a very important step for our university community, regarding the commitments and expectations we generated, but also regarding the result of the election, which was very close. It makes us think that we do not have an absolute advantage and that our peers who did not support our candidacy also have to be part of this new stage and that we have to include them in this project, what will be one of our first tasks,” the new university authority explained.

Natacha Pino Acuña graduated from the Universidad de La Frontera in 2004. Afterwards, she worked for several years as an academic at the UFRO Faculty of Engineering and Science, led the management team of the Training Node of the Engineering Project 2030 and was the person in charge of the Social Responsibility Program. She accepted the challenge to contribute to the installation process of the University of Aysén and to lead the undergraduate program in Civil Industrial Engineering in November 2018. She has a Master’s Degree in Advanced Production, Logistics and Supply Chain Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) and is currently studying horticultural supply chains for her doctoral thesis. In addition, she is an active member of the executive coordination of the Chilean Network for Learning Services.

Since the beginning of her professional career, she has been participating in different projects of local and regional interest, carrying out work that is linked to the municipalities, public services and territorial organizations, mainly in further training, consultancies and technical assistance in fields such as planning, strategies, quality accreditation systems, management control systems, entrepreneurship and project formulation, while putting industrial engineering at the service of the community, both in the public and private sector.