CIMNE participates in the meeting of UNESCO Chairs to discuss the challenges of higher education. Cecilia Soriano, the coordinator of the UNESCO Chair in Numerical Methods host by the UPC and managed by CIMNE, is attending this meeting held in Cordoba.
Representatives of 35 UNESCO Chairs from 35 Spanish universities have been meeting since yesterday in Cordoba at a national meeting sponsored by the UNESCO Chair in Conflict Resolution at the University of Cordoba. For two days, they will discuss issues such as the transformation of higher education, the work plans of the Unitwin Networks of Spain and the role of these chairs in university life.
It is the second time that the University of Cordoba (UCO) hosts this meeting after the one held in 2009, “thus showing the commitment that the UCO has with the values represented by UNESCO: freedom, peace, social progress, equal rights or human dignity,” said its rector, Manuel Torralbo Rodriguez.
For his part, the mayor of Cordoba, José María Bellido, welcomed the representatives of the chairs to the city and highlighted the trajectory of more than three decades of work of the same, “joining efforts in international cooperation, co-governance and exchange of knowledge of more than a hundred countries participating in the programs promoted by UNESCO”.
The inaugural conference was given by Keith Holmes, Research Coordinator of the Unitwin / UNESCO Chairs Programme, followed by Francesc Pedró, director of the International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) with the conference 'UNESCO's roadmap for the transformation of higher education: what do we expect from the UNESCO Chairs? Tomorrow it will be the turn of Fernando Vallespín, Professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid, who will speak on 'The University between past and future'.
UNESCO Chairs and Unitwin Networks
The UNESCO Chairs and Unitwin Networks programme, launched in 1992, brings together more than 850 institutions from 117 countries and promotes international inter-university cooperation and networking to strengthen institutional capacities through knowledge sharing and collaboration. There are currently 65 UNESCO Chairs in Spain, with the UCO being the only one to have organized this meeting on two occasions. In Andalusia, in addition to the UCO, the universities of Granada, specialized in sustainability, Malaga, in communication, and the International University of Andalusia, in interculturality, have UNESCO Chairs.
