During the activity, the new Accreditation criteria and standards were reviewed.

The event, organized jointly by the Postgraduate and Postgraduate Directorate and the Self-Evaluation Support Office, allowed Directors of Master's programs at the University of La Serena to learn about the scope and new requirements stipulated by Law 20.129, which establishes the quality criteria and standards for the Accreditation processes.

During the talk, the Accreditation criteria and the changes that we will face as an institution for the next institutional accreditation were addressed, given the new requirements required by the National Accreditation Commission. It was also the time to dispel doubts and review some difficulties that Master's programs face in order to face the institutional challenge of having all programs duly accredited and/or certified by 2025.

To do this, the person in charge of the Support Office, Dr. Jonathan Hermosilla, and the assistants reviewed, among other contents, the 5 dimensions of this process: Teaching and Results of the Training Process, Strategic Management and Institutional Resources, Internal Assurance of Quality and Link with the Environment, Research Creation/Innovation. In addition, he highlighted the commitment of the Self-Evaluation Support Office to the Coordinators and Directors of Graduate Programs, to facilitate the systematic collection of information and data processing with which they will work to prepare reports and achieve accreditation of the all programs.

For Dr. Jonathan Hermosilla, “this is relevant because in the new Accreditation or Quality Assurance model of Higher Education in Chile, Institutional Accreditation is comprehensive and under these new criteria and standards it will be practically impossible for a university to have an accreditation of excellence with programs that are at a basic level.”

On the other hand, for the Director of Postgraduate and Postgraduate Studies, Dr. Susan Galdames, the importance of this meeting lies in the fact that it is an opportunity to work in coordination: “the meeting was a joint action of the Directorate of Postgraduate and Postgraduate Studies and the Office of Support for Self-Evaluation, to coordinate joint work to support Master's programs that must be submitted, under the new criteria defined by the CNA, to the accreditation process during 2024."

Written by Paz Montecinos Kam - Chings, DirCom