Four establishments stood out in the national register. The Universidad de La Frontera is one of them.

According to the data submitted by the Chilean National Admission System (SUA), this year, 120,762 applicants have been selected. That is about 20 thousand more than in the admission process in 2017. In this context, the establishments that had more applicants than vacancies available are: Universidad de Concepción, Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Universidad de La Frontera and the Universidad Diego Portales.

The Rector of the university, Sergio Bravo, stated that “we have only two thousand vacancies available and that is a university strategy; we froze the quota for new students a long time ago because quality is the most important thing and we have to offer the best education possible with the financial resources we have”.

The UFRO finished the enrollment process for 2018 successfully and filled all vacancies for new students within only three days. Therefore, there will be no call for wait-list candidates.

In this context, Sergio Bravo said: “The trust of these young people and their families in our institution at the moment of choosing our university motivates us to keep working with high quality standards in the professional training, research and university outreach. The preference of all these young people invites us to renew our commitment with being the best regional and state university in Chile.”

Written by: Direction of Communications
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Companies in Santiago, Chillán, Puerto Varas and Temuco joint the projects presented by the Universidad de La Frontera to the Voucher Program of CORFO and Regional Prototype. It is an investment of more than 166 thousand Chilean pesos.

Eleven UFRO researchers, who are conscious that innovation is important for the future of Chile, sent their projects to the CORFO competition in order to introduce improvement in national companies that want to provide better service for the community.

Soil improvement, recycled concrete blocks development, electricity generation, lanolin extraction, surveillance systems and prototype generation are some of the ideas by the researchers of our institution. It is an investment of more than 166 thousand Chilean pesos that will help to introduce research, development and innovation (R&D&I) to regional companies.

The director of Innovation and Technology Transfer (DITT), Claudina Uribe, states that this as a confirmation of the work they outlined in 2017. “This is the result of a strategic plan that has to do with our cooperation with the companies. We wanted them to have the confidence to reach out to the research units of the UFRO and to ask for our researchers to participate in technological solutions that respond to their needs.”

EFFECTIVE LINKS

With the aim of strengthening the links of the UFRO with the socio-productive medium, DITT wants to contribute to the relation between science and companies, support entrepreneurship, local and regional innovation, processes of licensing and the participation and collaboration with associated R&D&I entities.

“We could observe that the productive sector has been sensitized with regard to the importance of knowledge, since the companies understood that innovation is important for a competitive advantage. In this regard, our task is to support the researchers, so they can work successfully in this cooperation between science and companies”, she pointed out.

This news filled the academic staff members who are part of the program, which is coordinated by the Office of Education in Health Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine, with pride, satisfaction and happiness.

A total of 48 professionals who are working with new and solid tools in university teaching in health sciences is a great outcome for the Master´s program in Innovation in University Teaching of Health Sciences that started in 2010 after carrying out different advanced training classes in the same area and that received its accreditation for seven years this week.

The director of the Master´s program and nurse, Dr. Mónica Illesca, said that “justice has been done in the case of this postgraduate program that faces new challenges, such as to maintain the quality for our students, what was ratified by the peer assessors. Seven years. That means we are doing well and we are very pleased, because I repeat: justice has been done.”

For the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Patricio Valdés, this is an enormous achievement for the faculty. “We want to progress in innovation and get all of our undergraduate and postgraduate programs accredited. This is why this accreditation is a motive to be satisfied and proud, because it is an advance in the tasks we proposed ourselves as the Faculty of Medicine”, he assured.

Illesca also mentioned a second challenge, apart from maintaining the quality, which is that “we have to innovate the academic body, add more teachers, invite more people to expand the group, which now does not exceed 13 persons.”

The Master in Innovation in University Teaching of Health Sciences is a professional training program that seeks to provide tools to improve the educational work practice in teaching resources, program design and research, but with the characteristic to “put all these teaching innovations in the field of health sciences into practice”, Illesca added.

The IX. version of the Master in Innovation in University Teaching of Health Sciences will start the second week of April and has a duration of two years. This new version of this program can say with proud that it is accredited from 2018 until 2025.

A new achievement of the University of La Frontera. This year, our institution is in 12th place of the general classification of the Universities Ranking by the Copesa Group and after 12 years, we were able to improve in the dimension “Quality perceived by employers”.

It is the 18th version of the ranking and the University of La Frontera obtained encouraging results. This consolidates a successful year regarding the factors considered. In the general classification, the UFRO improved one position and is now in 12th place. In the dimension “Quality Perception” the UFRO made a qualitative and quantitative step up, from 20th place in 2016 to 16th place in 2017, and in the dimension “Management” it climbed 5 positions up.

“The results of national and international rankings play an important role in public conversations about the prestige of universities. At the same time, they are a measurement method and source for reputation and because of that, since some years ago, they also are one of the indicators of our strategic plan. In addition, it is also a merit for a regional and state university to achieve better results each time, since Chile is a highly centralized country. Getting results like this in the University Quality Ranking of the Copesa Group motivates us to keep working for excellence, each day and in each of our actions”, the rector, Sergio Bravo, commented.

PERCEIVED QUALITY

One of the institutional achievements in this version of the ranking is the result in the dimension “Perceived Quality” that registers the level of knowledge and estimation of employers regarding the universities. On this occasion, one thousand employers – who directly or indirectly decide in the hiring process of future professionals – have been surveyed. In order to avoid bias, the grade each employer gives to the institution he/she studied at have not been considered.

“Being responsible for the communication strategies of our institution, I am extremely proud of this result. Not only because it confirms the institutional decision to create a Communications Direction and to include it in the directive group of the university, but also because receiving a better perception by employers, creates new opportunities for our graduates and academic staff members. Also because with this task, the institution has a better understanding of the transformative and not only disseminative role of university communication”, the director of Communications, Carola Espinoza, pointed out.

She adds that in 2018 she hopes that the university’s internal strategic communication culture will get strengthened and that every member of the UFRO community will assess his/her role to build a strong reputation. “The function of communication within an organization is to convert the objective quality into perceived and valued quality. This is what pushes the university towards reputation levels of excellence. For being able to achieve this, it is necessary to be, act and communicate with consistency – a task in which each UFRO staff member plays an essential role.”

MANAGEMENT QUALITY

Out of the four factors considered by the ranking in order to assess the dimension “Management Quality”, the factors institutional accreditation and number of full-time students are the ones with a higher preponderance. The other two factors are the retention rate and the timely graduation. Regarding this last factor, the UFRO shows an average of 1,5 semesters of difference between the formal and the actual duration of the programs. This puts the UFRO in second place at the national level.

In the overall ranking, the UFRO is on the ninth place in the dimension “Management Quality”, improving five positions compared to 2016.

“These university rankings fulfill a social function, because they give information to students, academic staff and researchers at the moment of choosing the university they want to go to or they are at. They are also a work tool for the employees in charge of directive management and they act as a barometer of comprehensive quality. From this perspective, they are our feedback for the quality system and help us to develop our internal culture of continuous improvement”, the director of Academic Quality, Dr. Martha Ramirez, pointed out.

According to the University Ranking, this year, 14 institutions maintained their position – three more than in 2016 – 12 universities moved down and 14 climbed up.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CHILEAN UNIVERSITY RANKING

Written by: Dirección de Comunicaciones
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