Through 40 large format acrylics, located in the most publicly accessible places on the different campuses, ULS will reinforce the communication of its vision, mission and values. The initiative is part of the corporation's strategic communication plan, in its line of identity.

“A university community that knows, understands and endorses the philosophy that underpins its actions is a community that will never lose its way.” This is stated by the Rector of the University of La Serena, Dr. Nibaldo Avilés Pizarro, when explaining the decision to strengthen the communication of the ULS identity through the installation, on each of the campuses, of large-format paintings that contain the Vision, Mission and Values ​​of the University.

There are 40 units arranged in sectors with high attendance or public access, in such a way as to promote broad access to the corporate definitions that outline the reason for being, the development horizon and the way in which the ULS community lives its project. institutional.

The initiative reinforces previous institutional efforts to communicate these identity elements, complementing the tables that already exist in offices. “This time - explains the director of Strategic Communication, Mg. Carola Espinoza, we integrate corporate values ​​into the dissemination support. Research on identity and communication of organizations shows us that making sustained communication efforts for the appropriation of the corporate philosophy contributes to the sense of community and provides explanatory frames of reference to those who are part of the institution, favoring self-regulated action that, permanently, tune individual objectives with those of the unit in which you work and the institution as a whole.”

The installation process began on August 20 and to date 19 of them have already been installed on the Ignacio Domeyko, Andrés Bello, Enrique Molina Garmendia and Isabel Bongard campuses. In the coming weeks, the installation will continue on the Limarí and Coquimbo campuses and the reinforcement of the campuses that already have the first acrylics.

During the event, attendees were able to learn about the offer of the four massive online courses and the Virtual Reality application that aims to promote astronomical tourism in the Estrella Region through citizen training.

Within the framework of the “CoquimboDay” event, an activity organized by the Regional Government, the Regional Corporation for Productive Development, CRDP, CIDERE and SOFOFA, the Digital Campus team of the University of La Serena participated by showing their two products from the Univrso project. , which seeks to strengthen astrotourism in the Coquimbo Region.

During the event, attendees were able to participate in presentations and conversation panels on topics related to tourism, mining and innovation in the Coquimbo Region, turning the activity into a showcase for investments in the area.

Cesar Villegas, representative of Univrso, positively evaluates the activity, highlighting the interest of the attendees: “many interested people came to our stand, they liked our products, both the massive online courses and the Virtual Reality application.”

Univrso is a project awarded by the University of La Serena through the Innovation Funds for Competitiveness (FIC-R) and consists of four massive online courses and a Virtual Reality application, which seek through citizen training to strengthen astronomical tourism in the Coquimbo Region (http://univrso.userena.digital/)

Nicole Fernández, tour operator of the Cruz del Sur Observatory (Combarbalá), participated in the first course “General Astronomy applied to the Skies of the Coquimbo Region and expressed: “For me the experience was quite educational, it was very entertaining because I really learned a lot , but it also helped me to reinforce some concepts that over time one forgets (...). I recommend this course to all people who are starting out in astronomy, it is quite good and complete,” she says.

a positive feedback

Various personalities related to tourism, politics and science, both local and national, participated during the event. Many of them saw the application and learned about Univrso courses. Among them the prominent astronomer José Maza, who congratulated the initiative, describing it as “a quantum leap. It is notable because in the past, in order to show children the sky, you needed to be at night and in person or through a planetarium, which is expensive equipment (…) This technology lowers those costs and we can show the sky to young people and children. and adults (…) I think it is an excellent initiative because it has notable potential.”

He also hopes that “astrotourism incorporates this technology, because it adds volume to the experience. With this, if they take a virtual tour, they can learn where the elements of the sky are located, which they can later identify in the patio of their house. It has much more weight, it is a very good instrument that would give a lot of volume and depth to the astrotourism experience.”

Furthermore, the mayor of Coquimbo, Marcelo Pereira, was excited to see this proposal. “I want to congratulate the University of La Serena. Being able to empower and give the tools to our people, to our neighbors so that they can be the promoters of cleaner and more beautiful skies, is really very important. I congratulate them because they are teaching courses on something that seems to be very complex to the community, courses that are prepared by teachers, with people with a lot of experience adapting it so that the community understood and could understand more the concept that we are the capital of Astronomy” says the mayor.

Finally, he extended the invitation to learn about these products: “I hope this is a reason for the entire community to participate, all Coquimbanos who want to learn about these courses, to the people of the conurbation and the entire region. "So that we ourselves can be the promoters and thus enhance tourism and boost and energize the economy in the region."

At the Gabriela Mistral Regional Library, the educational institution, through its inclusion project, held the seminar “Mental Health in Young People: Preventing Depression,” which included the participation of two experts in the area.

Providing information on the mental health of young people within the university context, from a preventive and health promotion perspective, was the main objective of the seminar “Mental Health in Young People: Preventing Depression”, organized by the Inclusion and Disability Project from the University of La Serena (ULS 1799), held on August 21.

The activity took place at the Gabriela Mistral Regional Library and had a large audience, made up of students, teachers, health professionals and professionals from different support and health programs of the University.

The presentations were given by the researcher from the University of Chile, Dr. Álvaro Jiménez and the head of the Mental Health Department of the Coquimbo Health Service, Dr. Sebastián Prieto, who spoke about the care that a young university student should have in the face of prevention in mental health.

“It is important that the audience that is present is made up mainly of young people, since during the activity we deal with a topic that today has been very popular among university students, such as mental health and depression, and it is very positive institutions "like the University of La Serena generates instances of this type," said Dr. Jiménez regarding the importance of being able to generate these spaces for dialogue with young people on topics of great relevance.

The activity ended with a round of questions, where both experts were able to generate a space for reflection around the protective and risk factors that currently influence the mental health of young people.

Written by Tomás Rodríguez, DirCom

The organization's objective is to be an advisory team for everything related to planning, organizing, controlling and evaluating the teaching activity of the University.

In order to strengthen quality assurance and management mechanisms for undergraduate teaching, the first Expanded Teaching Committee was held in the offices of the Teaching Improvement Unit of the University of La Serena.

The event was headed by the Director of Teaching (s), Dr. Pamela Labra and was attended by the Academic Vice-Rector, Dr. Alejandra Torrejón, and the School and Career Directors of the faculties of Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences and Economical.

The collegiate body aims to be an advisory team for everything related to planning, organizing, controlling and evaluating the teaching activity of the University, and will ensure compliance with the teaching function at the University, through a normalizing and coordinating action. of this type of institutional efforts, in addition to providing the procedures and methods required for its administration (Decree 137/1987, Article 13).

The Expanded Teaching Committee will meet monthly to address issues related to the multiple national challenges regarding the new requirements in Higher Education, which merit articulating efforts to satisfy these demands.

Through computer vision techniques applied to video images in real time, scientists from the University of La Serena showed the progress of this innovative initiative in Antofagasta and Valparaíso.  

During the Workshop “Survey of Competencies for the Development of Smart and Sustainable Cities” of the CAP4CITY project of the European Community, the project called “DeepLearning applied to public smart mobility” was presented, developed by Campus Digital together with the Data Science group of the University of La Serena, who presented the main guidelines of this initiative whose one of its final purposes is to reduce vehicle congestion in the Coquimbo Region.

This through the quantification of vehicle flow using advanced computer vision techniques (Deep Learning). The objective is to measure in real time the number of vehicles that travel in the region, their travel time, waiting at traffic lights, among other aspects that will allow the design of new strategies to reduce vehicle congestion and optimize travel times in the Region. from Coquimbo.

During the workshop, which is part of the CAP4CITY project of the Erasmus+ program, which is co-financed by the European Union and worked with different Latin American universities, participants presented different initiatives related to the implementation of smart cities in the country.

The Head of Digital Campus and part of the Data Science ULS group, Humberto Farías, points out that it has been a positive experience since “we were able to present the progress we have made in this project. Here we could see that our initiative is innovative not only at the regional level but also at the national and international level.” Likewise, he adds that "the Congress allowed us to visualize that as a University we can contribute a lot in this area, both in training aspects and in projects, in search of turning the Coquimbo Region into a benchmark in smart city projects in the country."

Dr. Marcelo Jaque, astronomer and part of the Data Science group, explains that this project has an innovative element: “we have been able to bring the experience acquired in tools applied to Astronomy to problems that involve citizens every day. "We will use the same methods that we use for the classification and detection of galaxies for the analysis of vehicular traffic in the Balmaceda axis of the city of La Serena."

This workshop had two versions in Chile, one at the Universidad Católica del Norte in Antofagasta and at the Federico Santa María Technical University in the city of Valparaíso. It has also been carried out in Colombia and soon in Argentina.

The CIMNE is a European research and simulation center that has a network of 31 classrooms internationally, and that allows the channeling of applied research and development needs that arise from academic units and regional industry.

With the aim of developing collaborative work in teaching, research and knowledge transfer in numerical methods in engineering, the ULS Faculty of Engineering was awarded the creation of a CIMNE Classroom. The initiative is carried out through the FIULS 2030 Project, with the aim of creating a Classroom to be part of the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (Centre Internacional de Mètodes Numèrics a l'Enginyeria), CIMNE.

The Center is a research organization created in 1987 at the heart of Spain's prestigious Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), as a partnership between the Government of Catalonia and the UPC, in cooperation with UNESCO.

Within the framework of international projection, the CIMNE has established a network of 31 classrooms in association with universities in Spain and Latin American countries, with the University of La Serena being the third university at the national level to make a strategic alliance with the Center . The CIMNE Classroom Network is the means to promote the grouping, integration, development and dissemination of new knowledge and applications of numerical analysis tools from the CIMNE Classrooms.

The Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Ing. Mauricio Godoy, indicated that “on this occasion we are working together, that is, integrating the university, inviting the different faculties and all the departments to participate in the CIMNE Classroom. our Faculty of Engineering. We are sure that this initiative will allow us to achieve great achievements not only for our students and academics, but also to solve needs, supporting the regional industry.”

The Mg. Eng. Paulina González, director of the Applied R&D and Industry Linkage Axis of the FIULS 2030 Project, chaired a meeting with academics and researchers from the Faculty of Engineering to present the FIULS CIMNE Classroom, where they were informed about the main guidelines for the execution of projects and research.

In this sense, Dr. Nelson Moraga, Director of the Doctorate in Energy, Water and Environment, pointed out that “it seems very good and positive to me that the Faculty is participating and collaborating with the best centers in the world with numerical methods, and I think this opportunity to be able to integrate all the departments of the Faculty of Engineering is excellent.”

The Director of the Department of Civil Works Engineering, Dr. Ing. Jaime Campbell, regarding the initiative, stressed that “the main challenge is to position the Faculty Classroom at a national level and also become a reference in the Southern Cone. This is an excellent opportunity for the Faculty, especially because this is one of the most prestigious centers in Europe, and covers different areas of engineering and other disciplines."

The activity was attended by academics from the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Mining Engineering and Civil Works Engineering, who make up the initial work team of the FIULS CIMNE Classroom, with the aim of supporting and collaborating from different areas in the context of the Classroom.

Written by María José Barraza, FIULS 2030 Project