A Coruña, December 22, 2017.- The Rector of the University of A Coruña, Julio Abalde, visited the Faculty of Sociology last Tuesday, as part of the round of visits he makes to each of the university centers. These meetings, open to all teaching staff, administration and service staff and students, aim to respond to the concerns that arise in each faculty directly. The Rector was accompanied by the Secretary General, Carlos Aymerich, and the Dean, Raquel Martínez Buján.
The Rector began by explaining the projects that the UDC has set for this academic year, which are to achieve specialization on the A Coruña campus and open up the offer of university degrees. Regarding the specialization campuses, Abalde clarified that they are continuing the steps taken in Ferrol with the specialization as an Industrial Campus and that for the A Coruña campuses, work is being done with the proposals for Sustainability (environmental and urban planning, economic, healthy and social life) and Innova (digital, technological and humanistic innovation), areas in which the UDC has great potential. The Rector explained that the specialization campuses will allow the actions of research groups and technology centers to be enhanced to make them more competitive and, in general, of the entire campus. Regarding the degree map, the Rector recalled that two years ago, a proposal for a new degree, the Degree in Landscape, was presented at the UDC, which was paralyzed by the Xunta while waiting for the Galician University System (SUG) to sign a management agreement for the new degree map that was initialed last year. The Xunta considers in this document that the SUG has a complete offer in terms of the number of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, so in order to implement a new degree, it will be necessary to eliminate another one, or make existing places available for the new degree. The UDC’s strategy, said the Rector, was to propose degrees linked to the campuses’ lines of specialization and that were current and innovative proposals for which a study was made of the Galician productive sector and the current offer at the SUG. “We detected sectors that require future training: aeronautics, digital, data management, fashion and the border between biomedical sciences and engineering, so we proposed degrees in four of these sectors and a master’s degree in the fifth, in addition to insisting on the Degree in Landscape that we had already requested”, declared Abalde.
This meeting at the Faculty of Sociology was also attended by the head of the Occupational Risk Prevention Service, Helena Fernández, who then reported on the situation with respect to the measures that are being taken in the building to guarantee its health, agreed with the faculty and which are progressing as planned.
The Dean thanked the Rector for his presence at the center and pointed out that the Faculty of Sociology has a lot to say about the new specialization campuses. “We have four very important research groups in the area of social sustainability, with very powerful researchers, the only Marie Curie at the UDC is in this faculty and we also have an excellent researcher from the UDC-Inditex InTalent program”, listed Martínez Buján. The Rector recognized this reality and encouraged all professors to immediately join the working groups that are outlining the strategic lines of the new specialties that will be presented in March. Abalde explained, at the request of the Rector, how the new academic calendar will be modified with the change of the University entrance exams from September to July from 2019 and that it will cause the three universities to start the course in the second week of September, although at the UDC it had already been starting in this period, so the change will not alter the calendar but will facilitate the start of classes with all the students incorporated at the same time. “We have a fifteen-week academic calendar with a three-week period without teaching, the longest of the three Galician universities to give students more facilities for taking exams”, said the Rector. Abalde confessed that the UDC has “the most logical calendar from the point of view of students and management of the centers”.
The regulations on teaching dedication also had a place in the debate with the Sociology community. The Rector explained that a modification is being studied to improve teaching quality. One of the professors agreed with this proposal and expressed his desire to achieve “more fair and equitable” regulations. The Rector explained that the regulations are being analyzed to make a diagnosis that allows for their improvement. Abalde explained some of the characteristics of the UDC with respect to other Spanish universities, such as the teaching dedication in the Final Degree and Final Master’s Thesis which, although they do not count towards the funding provided by the Xunta, the UDC recognizes as teaching dedication, as well as the presence of professors in courts.
At this point, the dean again intervened to evaluate the teaching work done in the Faculty of Sociology with the Final Degree Projects which is “excellent”, as students manage to raise their average grade thanks to it. “More and more, the TFGs are research studies that students continue in later years, which is important for research in our area”, she added. Another of the professors insisted on this issue and asked for greater public recognition for the TFGs of this center. “Here the TFGs are of very high quality, I am very proud of the work that is being done in this faculty”, she declared. The dean, who has barely been in office for a month, took the opportunity to advance some of the work proposals for her term of office, which include convening an Extraordinary TFG Award and organizing a social research conference in which students can present them. The Rector agreed that these high-quality works should be given added value with publications, greater public dissemination in specialized symposia or congresses, and pledged the support of the Rectorate in these actions.
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