The International Relations Unit on behalf of the Faculty of Engineering develops a program of professional training for the alumni community

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

In 2019, the Global Engineers Program of the Faculty of Engineering supported the international mobility of almost 200 students and is projected to address the alumni community in order to strengthen this network with graduates.

The international relations team of the Faculty of Engineering, along with the Alumni Services Unit of the Vice-rectory of Outreach and International Affairs, presented the Global Engineers Program for graduates that aim to develop an international academic offering of specialization courses for engineering graduates.

The Dean of the faculty, Juan Carlos Espinoza, pointed out that the internationalization process, suported by the Engineering Project 2030, has a fundamental role in the faculty because it promotes the development of competencies and aptitudes that would help them to face a globalized world.

“This proposal is essential, because if we want to strengthen our bond with the industry sector, we will need to keep our alumni as ally. To achieve this goal, we need to work together with our outreach staff members and each academic department,” explained.

According to the Deputy Director of the International Relations Unit, Cristian Díaz, “the main idea is to create an international academic offering to support the professional updating of specialized knowledge in graduates by doing short-term mobility and obtaining an international certification”, considering that labor market is even more internationalized and requires more cross-sectorial and technical abilities.

Furthermore, the International Relations member presented some international and specialized academic offering that are now focused on students, but it could be opened to graduates. These are effective communication and business English courses in Canada, and leadership and innovation courses in the Netherlands. This offering can include more courses according to the needs of each academic department.

The alumni policy aimed at building a collaborative network among the outreach staff members of the ten academic departments of the faculty. These units will be benefited with the professional development and acquisition of intercultural competencies from their alumni communities in world-standard universities. This process would highly improve the current graduate loyalty strategies.

In the meeting, Georgina Durán, Chief of the Usach Alumni Services, academics and member staff of the Outreach Unit of the Departments of Mechanical, Geographical, Electrical, Chemistry, Industrial, Informatics, Civil and Metallurgical Engineering were the attendees. Also, Catalina Miranda, Deputy Director of the Cooperation with the National Productive Sector Unit, presented the structural organization of this area and made the support of the unit available in terms of activities and calls promotions. Finally, the Coordination of Alumni Network from the same area will be responsible for establishing a mechanism to collect the updated information of former students.

Sylvana Vega, academic from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and coordinator of the Outreach Unit of the department welcomed this proposal saying “is extremely important to improve our relationships with graduates. We need to develop activities with the support of the university, so that we can keep former students close to us. In our case, most of the job offers for students come from our graduates’ references. The more loyal we are to them, the higher the employment rate will be.

As a conclusion, attendees were invited to assess interesting areas of specialization to promote with the support of the abovementioned units, so that the international academic offering can be wider and more attractive, according to the needs of each department and the interests of the graduates.

Written by Catalina Águila V.

Translated by Javiera Díaz