Aura Esther Álvarez Lara assumes the deanship of the Faculty of Education

With a Master's degree in Education, specializing in Environmental Education, an Educational Administrator, and a Bachelor's degree in Preschool Education, Álvarez faces the challenge of training leading translocal teachers.

Aura Esther Álvarez Lara, a university professor and researcher, has assumed the deanship of the Faculty of Education. Her extensive experience in academic, administrative, and managerial leadership positions, the design and implementation of academic projects for higher education, self-evaluation processes, high-quality accreditation of programs and institutions, and the renewal of undergraduate and graduate program registrations within the framework of quality assurance, among other projects for the education system, support the dean's expertise.

Álvarez Lara has held managerial positions such as head of human resources personnel, administrative sub-manager, director of undergraduate and graduate programs, director of teaching and curriculum, quality coordinator, and internship coordinator. She has also served as an internal auditor for the ISO 9001 model in educational organizations, and has provided diagnostic training, design, and implementation of quality management systems for the education sector.

At the international level, Dean Aura Esther has been a MASHAV Fellow, International Cooperation Center, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Golda Meir International Training Center Mount Carmel, Israel.

The recognition of his work, discipline, responsibility, willingness to collaborate, and service-oriented attitude demonstrates his leadership. He received the Governor Enrique Tomás Cresto Award for his contribution to the integrated economic development of Latin America. As a leader for development, he was awarded this distinction by the Honorable Senate of the Argentine Nation, as well as by the Argentine Federation of Municipalities and the Latin American Federation of Cities and Communes.

UCundinamarca: What are the main challenges of the Faculty of Education?

Aura Esther Álvarez Lara: There are several challenges that the dean's office must address, I would highlight: Reaccreditation of the Bachelor of Social Sciences program, curricular redefinition, transversal curricular reform with strengthening of research, practices, development of foreign language skills, practice guidelines, training routes to postgraduate studies (coterminal), rationalization of seminars, common fields of pedagogical training, double degree program with inter-program equivalencies.

In addition to the creation of the “Educational Observatory” with students and teachers as a “Learning Field” in which real problems are identified, projects are designed and proposals for action and intervention are developed; these are articulated to the practice, and the actions of the Fals Borda Research Center, increasing the results of research and making them visible regionally, nationally and internationally.

Likewise, the professional development of teachers from the "School of knowledge and learning", active participation in unions and institutions that generate public policy, and the promotion of inter-institutional agreements for double degree offers, with regional, national and international organizations for student and teacher mobility, joint and co-financed research projects.

UCundinamarca What are the strategic axes that the dean's office will continue to strengthen?

Aura Esther Álvarez Lara: Definitely the program reaccreditation, diversification of the undergraduate and postgraduate offerings; continuous self-evaluation of academic and administrative processes, as an instrument of continuous improvement; designing strategies to increase the percentage of students with advanced-level results in the Saber Pro Tests.

UCundinamarca What can the educational community expect from his appointment?

Aura Esther Álvarez Lara: Promoting dialogue and collective construction, generating licensed teachers who are committed to life, leaders, autonomous, entrepreneurial, critical, and proactive.

I hope to contribute to the macro processes of building the country, focusing on education for life, the consolidation of democratic values, the strengthening of freedom and multidimensional learning, as well as the implementation of learning fields as laboratories within the methodological strategies and curriculum in the programs.

Martha Liliana García/GLA

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