One of the main objectives of the agreement was to increase the international visibility of doctorates associated with BIOREN-UFRO. The obtained results position the university as a leader at the national level.

The Universidad de La Frontera provided relevant indicators in its last meeting with representatives of the Ministry of Education, sent to verify the latest advances in the Performance Agreement of Internationalization, which the institution executed between 2013 and 2017.

Working for 4 years, the main actors of this agreement - the Scientific Bio Resource Nucleus, the Doctorate in Natural Resource Sciences and the Doctorate in Sciences with mention in Applied Cellular and Molecular Biology - reached the majority of the programmed goals, and today, the relationship that the UFRO has with its foreign peers is a reference at the national level.

POSITIONED AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL

The strategies to increase joint scientific production with foreign researchers, partnerships to implement projects with national and international financing, increase the international visibility and the impact factor of the Journal Soil Science and Plant Nutrition -JSSPN-, strengthen the student mobility, English proficiency, co-tutorship and double graduation, are some of the keys that the UFRO made in front of Latin American and European universities.

"We are training doctors for the world. And with this in mind, our students must know that it is important to speak English, to relate to foreign peers and to publish in quartile one journals. They have to know and understand that the requirements are very high and that, as a university, we are committed to excellence", said the director of the BIOREN-UFRO, Dr. Maria de la Luz Mora.

At the same time, the international alliances with the most important university in Latin America (U. de Sao Paulo, Brazil) and European institutions (U. Federico II of Naples, Italy, U. Pierre Marie Curie, France, U. de Minho, Portugal) are a milestone in the implementation of the agreement. "We have reaffirmed the bases of internationalization. We are only one step away from a new double degree agreement with the U. of Leuven, Belgium. Our cooperation with Europe has been very dynamic", added the director of the Doctorate in Natural Resource Sciences, Dr. Francisco Matus.

All this is also supported by the numbers that show that the goal was accomplished: 20 double degrees, 42 students in co-tutorship, 64 students with English proficiency certification, 38 research stays in English speaking countries: Australia, Canada, England, United States and New Zealand.

At the same time, the large technological scientific platform BIOREN-UFRO - with the latest equipment - made it possible that publications achieve higher visibility, by using latest generation precision instruments for their investigations.

MINISTERIAL POINT OF VIEW

For the representatives of the Department of Institutional Financing of the Higher Education Division of the MINEDUC, Jaime Ormazábal, Paulina Enero and Irene Riffo, this visit revealed what it means to work as a team and have institutional support.

"I think the most interesting of this visit is to see the trajectory of the projects with their different degrees of complications, but which show that, through strong coordination and institutional support, it is possible to carry out ambitious projects", said Paulina Enero, the analyst of the UFRO.

Jaime Ormazábal - spokesperson of the head of the Department of Institutional Financing - said that there is always space for improvement and the university is ambitious in that and the institution never loses sight of its continuous improvement. "It drew my attention that there are no isolated proposals, there is always a team behind it and that is what is valued, because that is what brings sustainability in the future."

Finally, Irene Riffo, an expert analyst, said that also for the MINEDUC, sustainability is the line to follow this year. "Lately, the University has demonstrated that the proposals, which have been financed by the Ministry, can have projection and there are substantial advances in relation to how they were initiated. The UFRO could be an example for other institutions, the financing is not for particular projects or just for doing anything, it is a serious job, and that allowed them to have a projection beyond the financing of the Ministry.

According to the authorities of the UFRO, the university made the strategic decision to persevere in the complexity of its academic activity through partnerships and international cooperation. "We are betting where we have to bet and the idea is that it continues like this. It is a way to force ourselves and focus on where to invest efforts", said the director of Analysis and Institutional Development, Dr. Ricardo Herrera.

Written by: Lorena Espinoza
Vice Rectorate of Research and Postgraduate Programs