On the occasion of the 54 years of the UNR, the rector Franco Bartolacci took stock of his management and spoke about the challenges ahead.
A new anniversary for the Universidad Nacional de Rosario It is celebrated this November 29 with a party for the university community at the CUR. But the date is also a trigger to draw balances, renew challenges and reaffirm objectives to continue with what the rector Franco Bartolacci calls a “profound reform of the institutional culture of the university.” During this time, numerous infrastructure works were launched, investment in science and technology was reinforced, more than 70 new careers and paths, three new middle schools were created, under the six strategic lines proposed at the beginning of the Agenda management. 2030 that proposes bringing the university closer to the needs of the city and the region. In December, the guidelines for an academic pedagogical reform will be presented that plans to implement changes starting next year.
“There was an empowerment of the community that enabled a lot of things to happen that had not happened for a long time. In recent years, the university has gone through a process of expansion unprecedented in its entire history, in all the most important records, in academic matters. , in scientific production, infrastructure, extension policy, and institutional innovation", the rector listed while recalling that all this occurred in the exceptional context of the pandemic in addition to the enormous economic difficulties of this last year.
When you arrived at the Chancellor's Office, what were the most important areas to transform, the most difficult structures to move?
The most difficult thing to reverse is that there is a culture of a certain conformism, the university is a tremendously transformative institution that has phenomenal power in all matters of Rosario and the region, it can make a contribution because it has what it takes, but many times it rests on its comfort zone. It is assumed as an entity that accredits excellent training -in fact it does so in traditional careers- then the mission is fulfilled, period. I believe that the university, because it is a consequence of the collective effort that society makes to sustain it, more than ever has to make a contribution not only to guarantee an excellent education, but also to reform deeply in order to do better and to put everything it produces in terms of technological scientific development at the service of the problems of the city. In this sense, the discussion process that we call the 2030 Agenda is key -in Chile, ECLAC is going to recognize us as a good practice in higher education and advises all institutions to do so. The 2030 Agenda generated a very democratic and horizontal modernization process and a consensus on the objectives of the institution, what we call the University we want. It became clear that many times what is missing is the call, it is not that there is no desire, the desire to generate this change had to be generated in the community.
After the pandemic, a change to hybrid classrooms was announced, what were the advances?
We grew a lot, but the discussion is much deeper. There is a record in infrastructure that changed, it is no longer just new square meters that are incorporated, but it is necessary to invest in technology. We were able to make great progress in hybrid classrooms in schools and colleges with an initial investment of 60 million pesos two years ago. This year we are already in the third call to continue adding these devices to the classroom that are used a lot. There is still an axis there that is being built of how much face-to-face and how much virtual, the challenge is to creatively combine the two things, face-to-face is essential and it is the essence of what we do at the university, at least in ours, but virtuality also allows you to break boundaries that were traditionally obstacles to accessing higher education. That is part of the problem, but I think it falls short, it is deeper: it is to discuss the architecture of the classroom in its broadest concept, the incorporation of technology and for what, how long does the master class last, what do we do with the technology with which students arrive (who are with their phones in their hands all the time) so what was new 30 years ago was sharing a theory that young people had not read, today there is nothing new because young people have access to the text in multiple ways before the class that the teacher dictates. We knew it before the pandemic, in the 2030 Agenda it appeared as a diagnosis, but the pandemic accelerated everything. This year we held four meetings with teachers, a workshop with students, a student survey that was very powerful, and in December we are going to consider a document that proposes a pedagogical academic reform at the university to start implementing changes starting next year. coming.
Where is the teaching work progressing, what emerges from the teaching meetings that try to modify a centuries-old way of teaching?
There is a need for training and education for the staff and we are doing it, now we are launching ten free teacher training courses on these topics, the need for this transformation appears without too many certainties of the 'how', the axis is to continue making transcendent what it happens inside the classroom and sometimes you get lost in that conformist thing. It is also to do it quickly. This year we generated many participatory instances, but the objective is to produce a document in December that establishes work guidelines for next year. This is a problem of the Argentine university system, not only of our university, and it is the slowness to provoke changes, so in a world that changes rapidly, almost when you managed to produce a transformation, you have to start discussing everything again. And it must be done quickly because, although it sounds alarming, if the university does not change much, there is a risk that it will lose its importance in the world we live in, at least the place it occupied in other times.
Can you think of shortening careers, for example in Communication, Law, Politics? That they last four years? Can those study plans be reviewed?
You have to do it. There are things that the university can do but they must be discussed at the national level, because we are contemplated in current legislation. One of the challenges that the system has is to modify the duration of the races, without a doubt. What we propose as a guideline is that the new careers, the bachelor's degrees be thought of in four years and the minimum hours required in the current legislation be taken as the maximum, that is a necessary reform. In these years, since 2019, we have created more than 70 new careers, the implementation of the diploma course that was not previously in our university helped us to multiply the proposals, we launched the three-year artificial intelligence technique that went very well I think we have to bet more on technical degrees, and all the new degrees that we launched were done with an innovative format that were not built from a single faculty, and they last four years, the first experience with tourism graduates is very good. And yes, in the careers that already exist, progress must be made in the reform of the study plans.
What happens with more traditional careers such as Medicine that are so extensive, for example, this problem of the lack of pediatricians has now appeared, are there any plans to shorten those journeys?
It requires research within the university and the national university system has to reconsider this too, it requires a lot of will, an institutional political decision to bring about these changes, and it requires a cultural change, because it also happens that a priori we are all in agreement that such a degree should have a longer duration and then when we go to discuss to reform the study plan, it turns out that we all propose a little more. And reviewing the format, this question that everything that exists in a discipline has to be taught in the degree that doesn't work anymore in the world we are living in, is part of the chip that we have to change. This is done with discussion and community engagement, I am very confident in that. It is more exhausting, it requires more work, but having achieved all the things we did in this way also makes the changes more appropriate, more effective. The next axis is the academic and pedagogical reform.
Regarding this of multiplying the study and training paths, next year Design begins, are there more planned? what other topics?
There are many in the area of health, well-being, physical education, nutrition, kinesiology, occupational therapy that there is a claim. It is very complex to launch a new university degree for all that it requires, resources, infrastructure, people, and in very particular conditions like the ones we are going through. What we have already done, having launched 70 careers in this context, is practically revolutionary, we must continue in that direction because a good part of the growth we have or the possibility of sustaining the number of university students will be associated with these new proposals. For example, today tourism, which is having its first graduates, adds 4 students to the UNR who previously could not travel in the public university environment. We have almost 2 pre-registered for the Clothing Design and Graphic Design careers that start next year. The objective that we set for ourselves in August 2019 is to make the university present where it is not and to make those who do not arrive arrive. This is done in many ways, but among other ways it is done by multiplying the training paths.
The Trades School joins these proposals.
At the School of Trades in one year we had almost as many inquiries as there were total enrollments in all the university's careers, this shows that there was an expectation of education and training for young people in the region that was not contained, that is saying something, It's great that we've channeled it through the Trades School, but it's also telling us that we have to rethink everything else. The Popular University Program, which is having a wonderful experience, especially at the Casa Esmeralda headquarters, as well as the public university access scholarship that allowed us to put resources into going to look for those who did not arrive, before we always put it in which they were studying.
What value do you give to social networks?
I am very critical of what the networks produce, that initial aspirational thing that the networks came to democratize and that they allowed information to spread to other places, I think that this diluted over time and I think it brings out the worst in all of us in all the senses, I do attach great importance to it as a communication tool with the community. In the Rector's Office, as in many Executives, there can be a certain abstraction, so the networks allow you more direct contact with the community, I manage and answer the messages, that allows you a finer record of what is happening, what are the problems: what is missing, what do they feel.
What is your engine for this job?
It is the consequence of a situation of enjoyment, what one enjoys does so with better energy. I take this as a tremendous privilege, because it is, but I also enjoy it a lot, I feel very comfortable doing what I do, I like it, I wake up wanting to do it, I go to bed thinking about things I would like to do, and I am also aware of the finiteness of time, which flies by, I look back and say I am almost finishing this mandate and it is tremendous, it seems to me that it has passed very quickly, so this responsibility of not wasting time in trying to do what I always thought I should the university had to be, at least try to contribute towards that from my place. I don't know if it happens in other spheres, but many of the things that one always aspired for the university to be, perhaps can only be changed from this place. There is something like an internal mandate, like a total imperative, if I went all the way for thirty years, I dreamed, I claimed, I asked, I proposed that the university be such a thing, there is no excuse. And then there is a more general mandate that there is no right to fail because of the resources that people put here and because of the needs that are outside. All these things come together in a rather obsessive personality with work and do this that is perceived for better or worse.
What comes in the UNR? Whats Next?
My energy is going to be put into everything. Many times I am asked why we launch so many things at the same time, and well because I believe that you have to get your hands on all those things at the same time, if you wait for the right and opportune moment to do something, that moment will probably never come, I have the theory that you always have to put everything on the table, discuss, and agree on what you can, and move forward on what can be done. I do believe that there are two main axes that follow and one is an administrative reform towards the interior of the university because in order to meet all the objectives, progress must be made in transparency, innovation in management, incorporation of technology, digitization of processes. And then as the main axis almost an inevitable pedagogical academic revolution if the university wants to continue fulfilling its mission. Finish consecrating all that we aspire for the university to be and that is synthesized in the university we want, the one we feel in our hearts and the one we aspire to be, as we defined it on the first day, of excellence and popular, innovative, creative, diverse, plural, feminist, genuinely committed to the problems and agenda of her time. In the society in which we live, Executives spend a lot of time justifying why they could not do what they had promised, if there is something that makes me proud, not in personal but collective terms, that we are one hundred percent of the things we said on the 6th of August 2019 we launched them. What costs the most is that cultural transformation and there is no fact that establishes it, it is a process that can take a long time.
Journalist: Micaela Pereyra / Photographer: Camila Casero