GEDC’s Latam Summit held at UTN Buenos Aires
Deans of Engineering Schools from 19 countries gathered for two days to debate on innovative strategies to improve education quality and discuss new competencies for the future engineers.
UTN Buenos Aires was venue for the VII Summit of the Global Engineering Deans Council, Latin American chapter (GEDC LATAM), which was held on September 11 and 12 in the Main Auditorium of the School, under the motto: “Challenges for Engineering in Latin America”.
About 100 Engineering School Deans from Latin America, authorities from the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) and the Consejo Federal de Decanos de Ingeniería (CONFEDI) [Federal Council of Engineering Deans] participated.
The deans discussed future lines of work to meet the engineering challenges and to improve the strategies aimed at attracting more students to engineering degree programs, while guaranteeing the best education quality.
In the opening of the Summit, Guillermo Oliveto, UTN.BA’s Dean and member of the GEDC Executive Committee thanked the authorities of the Latin-American GEDC “for trusting us to be part of the organization of this event, whose driving force is a friend of mine, Eng. Miguel Sosa, Dean of Facultad Regional Delta, who really assumed the responsibility for organizing this event.”
“We are proud to have you here, in this Main Auditorium so beloved and important to us the “tecnológicos” because, as I often say, – he continued – it is here that the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, today the most important Engineering School of Argentina, was created.
Oliveto emphasized that 19 countries of the region participated in the summit, which he considered ”a great satisfaction”.
On the first day of the Summit the following conferences were presented: “Challenges of Engineering”; “The OAS, Inter-American Competitiveness Network”; “Regional Conference of Higher Education for Latin America and the Caribbean-2018”; “New Engineering Standards – Competences in the education of the engineer”.
On Tuesday 12, the closing day, conclusions were presented and working groups were created to discuss different main topics in order to make decisions on different areas for the next GEDC Latam 2018, which will be held in Ecuador.
The creation of those “executive committees” is aimed at fostering collaboration between the Schools in order to promote progress in engineering education, to strengthen research and technological transfer, and to propose regional policies that support Engineering development.
The GEDC-LATAM
The GEDC Latin-American chapter gathers Deans and authorities from faculties, schools, universities or technology institutes from Latin America and the Caribbean who are members of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC).
Its mission is to facilitate the collaboration between deans of engineering schools of the Region, to represent them in the GEDC and to promote progress in engineering education, research and outreach in the Region.
To achieve this, a regional forum was proposed to exchange information, experience, challenges and good practices in the management of engineering programs; to enable collaboration between deans from the Region in order to promote development and innovation as well as collaboration with the industry and other stakeholders associated to engineering; to create a network that allows deans of engineering to lead the development of regional, national and international policies; and to actively participate in the development and maintenance of a regional system of quality standards in engineering education. This Summit, which was jointly organized by CONFEDI and UTN, is the consequence of a sustained activity performed by both organizations over the last few years to promote the internationalization of Education in Engineering in Argentina. This process, which started almost ten years ago, reached its peak with the organization of the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) 2012 but continued with the appointment of professors and authorities in our university in leadership posts in first-level international institutions like the International Federation on Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) and GEDC. In addition, there is also a large number of students and faculty members who have been participating in international summits, thus being able to generate links which enable collaboration activities with countries from different regions in the world.
