On September 1st, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) inaugurated an international symposium titled "The university, the driving force of change in society: the challenges of research universities".

More than 20 institutions from 10 countries took part in the symposium: California University, Berkeley, Universidad Politecnica Salesiana from Ecuador (UPS), Colegio de Postgraduados de México, Programa de Alta Dirección de la Universidad de Piura, U. Tecnológica de Chile, U. Pontificia Javeriana de Colombia, U. Nacional de La Plata and U. Politécnica de Madrid.

Here are some of the topics that were discussed during this event:

- From a professional university to a research university: strategies
- Community involvement in research universities
- Towards an academic community that conducts research and innovates
- Rankings, a university's image worldwide: Webometrics

UPS president Javier Herran, PhD, presented his paper titled "Towards an academic community that conducts research and innovates: Universidad Politecnica Salesiana" and explained the university's institutional project which considers students as the core.

UPS's educational model responds to fundamental strategies that seek to focus on the student in order to favor their entrance to the university, guide research, teaching and community involvement according to young people's reality, especially in vulnerable sectors in order to seek change, educate people committed to justice and promote proposals that influence educational purposes.

"The system of UPS becomes an ecosystem of UPS as long as the university community creates an opinion by communicating its positive experiences that focus on common objectives, through a communication model with participation that invites audiences from knowledge-action", said Father Herran during his talk.

One of the most outstanding talks was the one presented by Isidro Aguillo, PhD, director of Cybermetric and the editor of Webometrics Rankings. He talked about the importance of the indicators that classify universities. He spoke about how the concept, mission and perspective of universities is universal and how universities influence change in society and that they are not only an element to prepare future professionals.

The challenge of universities, not only research universities, is big: to become driving forces that change society, to recover its Alma matter nature and look for the truth by having a projection towards the community and society.

(Source: Boletin UNLP/UPM)