Historical Review

The reconstruction of the historical memory of the University of Cundinamarca community, from its founding and the different moments that reflect its capacity to adapt to social changes and the development of the region until today, demonstrates its need to transcend to other spaces consistent with modernity and the dynamics inherent to a knowledge-generating institution, characteristics that suit this historical moment and are captured in this document.

Established in 1969 by Ordinance No. 045 of December 19 as the University Institute of Cundinamarca (ITUC), which stipulates that the ITUC will offer higher education to men and women who hold a high school diploma or a teaching certificate, and that it will give preference to students from the department. Academic activities began on August 1, 1970, at the Fusagasugá campus with programs in Agricultural Technology, Administrative Technology, and Executive Secretarial Studies.

In April 1973, work began at the Ubaté branch. The programs offered were Business Administration and Educational Sciences. The Education program included a basic semester that led to two majors: Mathematics and Languages.

On March 4, 1974, activities began at the Girardot branch with the Nursing, Biology and Chemistry, and Social Sciences programs.

In 1981, through Agreement No. 005 of the Superior Council, the ITUC Research Center was created, an organization of vital importance to reorient and facilitate the teaching-learning process, as well as to promote the development of sciences, arts, and techniques in order to seek solutions to society's problems.

On April 18, 1986, by means of Agreement No. 021 of the Superior Council, the Regulations for the institution's teaching staff were adopted.

In 1990, the ITUC requested recognition as the University of Cundinamarca from the Ministry of National Education. On December 30, 1992, through Resolution No. 19530, institutional recognition was established.

Once it acquires university status, its presence in the main provinces of the Department of Cundinamarca increases as follows:

1. The Facatativá extension is created by means of Agreement No. 006 of July 7, 1994.
2. The extension of Chía is created through Agreement No. 003 of January 27, 1999.
3. The Chocontá extension is created by means of Agreement No. 003 of January 27, 1999.
4. The extension of Zipaquirá is created through Agreement No. 0027 of 1999.
5. The extension of Soacha is created by means of Agreement No. 033 of November 3, 2000.

INSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES

The University of Cundinamarca is guided by the following principles:

1. social responsibility: The education provided by the University is a cultural public service that fulfills a social function within a comprehensive conception of the values of man and his world.
2. Universality: the University will be open to all social forces of the department of Cundinamarca, establishing a presence in its municipalities; it will connect with all advances in science, technology, and innovation, and will be permeable to the various manifestations of scientific, philosophical, and artistic thought.
3. Freedom of education: there shall be academic freedom, understood as the faculty of the teacher to share knowledge without subjection to beliefs, doctrines, political and ideological conceptions, responding to programmatic content and ethical, axiological, scientific, and pedagogical principles.
4. Freedom to learn: eunderstood as the right of the student to develop critical thinking regarding knowledge, subject to the principle of academic freedom and to use available sources of information for the improvement and deepening of their knowledge.
5. Ethical commitment: The University, due to its educational and diffusive nature regarding knowledge, shall have a social function that determines ethical responsibilities for the university community toward its students and society.
6. Relevance of knowledge: The University will ensure the cultivation and generation of knowledge that guarantees the theoretical and practical understanding of problems at the local and translocal levels.
7. Autonomy: The University has the right to enact and amend its statutes and regulations, appoint its academic and administrative authorities, create, organize, and develop its academic programs, define its policies, and grant the corresponding degrees; likewise, to select its students, professors, and administrative staff; clarifying that said autonomy shall be subject to the constitutional and legal framework.
8. Regarding the difference: At the University, respect for ideological, political, racial, religious, and gender diversity, as well as freedom of expression and thought, shall prevail. Likewise, coexistence within the university community must be based on respect for human rights.
9. Academic excellence: The University will carry out its activities with criteria of relevance, striving to achieve the highest levels of knowledge.
10. Diversity of action: The University will promote the intellect in all manifestations of technique, science, technology, humanities, art, philosophy, and other expressions aimed at the progress and development of its students and its communities.

INSTITUTIONAL OBJECTIVES

The University of Cundinamarca establishes the following objectives:

1. Promote the awareness and reaffirmation of human values, culture, and the comprehensive integration of Colombians into the benefits derived therefrom.
2. Contribute to the study and development of technologies for the protection and use of natural resources, the preservation of life on the planet, and sustainability with nature and the environment.
3. Promote professional training within the framework of culture, science, technology, and innovation at the higher education level; and community service through social interaction oriented toward the development required by the department and the country.
4. Advance programs relevant to the interests of vulnerable populations, at the urban and rural levels, in the department of Cundinamarca.
5. To promote comprehensive training, based on scientific, ethical, and humanistic foundations, for employment, work, and the free development of personality, in order to integrate efficiently and responsibly into the axiological, professional, scientific, artistic, and social service dimensions required by the department and the country. Likewise, to strive for an education for life that fosters democratic values, civility, and freedom.
6. Continuously evaluate institutional tasks, taking as a reference what is established in the Institutional Educational Project and its Development Plan.
7. Consolidate the institutional presence in the national and international scientific and academic context, through results derived from the competencies and skills of the Universidad de Cundinamarca university community.
8. Promote the integration of the University with the various social sectors at the local, departmental, and national levels, with the purpose of being a factor for social, economic, and political development.
9. Contribute to the development of the preceding educational levels, seeking to facilitate their articulation with higher education and the achievement of their corresponding goals.

TRAINING AND LEARNING

Through this action, the University of Cundinamarca seeks to fulfill the purposes of comprehensive student training defined in its pedagogical model within the framework of a humanistic, liberating, dialogic, flexible, emancipatory, critical, and complex education that contributes to the construction of meanings and significance. In short, within the framework of this substantive function, the assurance of the quality of training and learning is continually sought.

In the educational and learning process, the curriculum is defined as an investigative, self-evaluative, and communicative project of a dialogic nature, oriented toward the comprehensive education of citizens committed to social development and the production of knowledge. In short, the curriculum is the organized combination of all the constituent elements of the educational act that make it possible to guarantee a high-quality service. To this end, the University establishes academic organization by credits, which prioritize the autonomous development of the student.

For its part, faculty development is inherent to education and learning, science, technology, innovation, and other core functions of the University, which implies developing a rigorous process for the selection of academic merit through a competitive contest. Additionally, regarding the qualification of the faculty, projects are carried out aimed at doctoral training, pedagogical and research training, updating in a specific discipline, and proficiency in a second language.

The teacher is a researcher in the dual sense, in their discipline and in the educational and pedagogical field, in a permanent search for knowledge regarding scientific innovation, technology, and pedagogical experience, giving an account of the world in which we live, demonstrating an awareness of the times and a disciplinary imagination and creation that must foster innovations and developments within the framework of the cultural production of a revealing, local, and globalized human present.

In accordance with the above, the teacher is a free, transformative, interactive subject and a knowledge manager. Likewise, the student is the center of academic culture, a creator of opportunities, autonomous, critical, and proactive.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

This field of knowledge is conceived as an ongoing practice, articulated with the institution's Mission and objectives, which makes it possible to formally consolidate a set of theoretical-conceptual, methodological, and technical capacities, competencies, and skills, identified with the teleological, scientific, and ethical monitoring of the principles of plurality, interdisciplinarity, integrality, and intersectoral action, which contribute to the economic, social, and cultural development of the country.

In this sense, the University of Cundinamarca conceives the field of science, technology, and innovation as one of the substantive functions of higher education and, in its development, as an action that requires vocation and discipline in order to generate and manage relevant knowledge with the capacity to respond to the speed at which changes occur in society. In its social action, the University interacts with the academic and business community of the country and offers academic programs with curricula contextualized in relation to scientific and technological advancements and the specific issues of its communities.

From this field, the University assumes the responsibility of fostering the development of science, technology, and innovation, as well as critical, reflective, and analytical capacity, which contributes to national scientific and technological advancement and strengthening, oriented with priority to the cultural improvement and quality of life of the population, participation in the search for alternative solutions to problems, and the social and economic progress of the country.

The guiding and structural framework of the science, technology, and innovation system at UDEC is designed to contribute to creating and managing knowledge, and is subject to adjustments in accordance with institutional evolution and change, as well as the dynamics of knowledge in the global environment.

The University of Cundinamarca defines guidelines on science, technology, and innovation in the classroom, research training, the production of scientific knowledge, the promotion of research groups, student research seedbeds, assistants, and young researchers, and the fundamental parameters regarding research lines. In this process, it is viewed as a transversal component of the curriculum in the development of competencies for project formulation, methodology design, teamwork, approaches, the development of innovations, and the search for alternatives to solve problems.

Research training assumes learning as a construct mediated by the praxis applied by the student, accompanied by the professor, through the observation, description, and reflection of the problems in their environment, seeking to participate in their qualified intervention and solution in order to capitalize on experiences and knowledge, thereby contributing to the transformation of reality.

Science, technology, and innovation at the University of Cundinamarca are developed with the purpose of creating new knowledge and transfer; a dynamic oriented toward the development of disciplinary knowledge, which seeks to transcend teaching understood as the reproduction of knowledge, and to generate from the classroom a process of training and learning that defines, in turn, the new role of the researcher.

UNIVERSITY INTERACTION

University interaction is a function that articulates with science, technology, and innovation, with training-learning processes, and with social interaction. Its purpose is the ongoing execution of production, construction, and transfer exercises regarding knowledge and culture, enabling integration, encounters, and dialogue with the community and society in the creation of solutions that contribute to national policies and aid in the understanding and transformation of social, local, regional, and national reality.

University interaction starts from the educational community's purpose of training, both in the exercise of their professions and within the framework of the ethical responsibility of their actions, through processes of inquiry and knowledge construction in specific social environments; the contextualization and exchange of experiences and knowledge; community training and capacity building; the socialization, dissemination, promotion, circulation, and communication of culture, art, sports, knowledge, and innovations across multiple areas of knowledge.

University interaction will imply a real and effective connection with the environment, especially in three areas: the productive sector, the State, and civil society. Interaction with each of them will occur based on the identification of the interests and needs of each party, adhering to criteria of solidarity, sustainability, and recognition of the spheres of action of each actor and their consequent role in the construction of sustainable development.

University interaction fosters the engagement and active participation of its graduates to enrich their personal and professional endeavors, strengthen their sense of belonging, and seek projection in the surrounding environments through contributions to the various policies and programs of the University of Cundinamarca. For this purpose, it will be necessary to graduate an innovative, entrepreneurial student who is therefore a job creator, contributing to the solution of problems in the local, departmental, and national environment, thus fulfilling the University's mission of educating an individual for life, democracy, and freedom.

INTERNATIONALIZATION

Internationalization is a foundational dimension that is articulated with the processes of science, technology and innovation, education and learning, social interaction, and university well-being. Therefore, local, national, and international visibility will be highly related to recognition, local identity, and high levels of autonomy to establish solid agreements for academic, artistic, and cultural institutional cooperation in global terms.

For the visibility of institutional processes in diverse local and international contexts, breaking geographical, cultural, linguistic, and technological boundaries will be essential, with the purpose of enriching institutional processes and contributing significantly to the different contexts, based on academic production in tune with the vast cultural and artistic wealth that characterizes the region and the country.

The University will strengthen and support relationships and communications among different higher education institutions, science, technology, and innovation centers, and public and private entities located primarily in the Andean region. Likewise, affiliation with national and international networks and associations will be strengthened.

In addition to student and faculty mobility, priority will be given to the internationalization of the curriculum, understood as the set of academic, administrative, and technological actions that the University of Cundinamarca implements cross-cuttingly for the comprehensive training of globally competitive professionals and researchers with cultural identity, so that they can practice their profession with excellence at the local, national, and international levels.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The University of Cundinamarca assumes entrepreneurship as a way of thinking and acting oriented toward the creation of wealth. It is a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting focused on opportunities, presented with a global vision, and carried out through balanced leadership and the management of calculated risk. Its result is the creation of value that benefits the company, the economy, and society.

Along the same lines, life skills training aims to develop a culture with actions tending to foster learning to entrepreneur through training in basic competencies, job competencies, citizenship competencies, and business competencies within the formal and non-formal educational system and its articulation with the productive sector, with the purpose that the graduate becomes an articulator of productive mobility in the same region, generating the added value of the necessary knowledge for their progress based on the competitive advantages that characterize them and that are the source of their relationship with the world.

Pedagogical Model

The University of Cundinamarca is based on a pedagogical model under the premise of cultural plurality and the new paradigm of transmodernity, characterized as an academic, scientific, visible, dynamic, open, reflective, critical, interconnected reality, sustainable with the environment, capable of incorporating into its raison d'être the consensuses of humanity, with the purpose of providing a real-time response to the knowledge society. Its central scope is founded on a dialectical dynamic from which the process of creating new knowledge prevails within a learning community, as a transcendental basis for knowledge production, individual and collective transformation, where the local and the translocal are proposed as a methodology for development sustained by pertinent knowledge.

Through the implementation of the transmodern digital pedagogical model, multidimensional learning will be prioritized, understood as the process carried out in an open, inclusive, collaborative, and transcendent multidimensional campus (virtual, institutional, face-to-face, cultural, and international) that uses strategies, methods, techniques, and instruments to foster the comprehensive development of the human being, the disciplines, and the academic community, whose purpose is an ethics of knowledge, learning, and action in order to promote education for life, democratic values, civility, and freedom, involving professors, students, parents, administrative staff, and directors, engaging different spaces, times, relationships, and environments throughout life, characterized by being autonomous, open, collaborative, interactive, and customized.

The learning that must be fostered is that which promotes an ethics of knowledge, from learning to action, through which each student of the University of Cundinamarca forges an internal code composed of values, principles, and norms that allow them to be a humane, civilized, and free person, capable of practicing a profession, coexisting in society, and accepting the challenge of being better every day.

Virtual education and connectivism will also be strengthened to support learning processes, with the potential to meet the educational demand in the department of Cundinamarca and establish a gateway for dialogue with the world.

CURRICULUM ELEMENTS

The curriculum at the University of Cundinamarca is characterized by four elements in accordance with its principles and educational model, understood as follows:

1. The construction of didactic processes undertaken with pertinent criteria that foster harmonious relationships between teaching and learning through curricular content adapted to institutional projects, objectives, and goals.
2. Complementing academic training with an ethical experience based on high moral values, upholding the fundamental principles of our culture and forging strong, enterprising personalities with outstanding levels of social adaptation.
3. Understood as a means to facilitate education in a world characterized by change, as well as the expansion of disciplinary boundaries, the interaction of knowledge, and the emergence of new fields of knowledge, academic development, and professional practice. At the curricular level, this is evident in elective courses, the various options for degree requirements, and the updating of study plans. Likewise, it fosters the use of different pedagogical strategies, assessment processes and procedures, internship options, student mobility, and technology-supported or virtual courses.
4. Integrate the acquired competencies and knowledge into the regional dynamics through appropriate curricula and methodologies that allow students to seamlessly articulate with the environment in which they operate and develop their life plans.

CURRICULUM DESIGN

The University of Cundinamarca understands the curriculum as an academic mechanism for the organization and distribution of knowledge, which focuses its reflection and action on human, scientific, and technological training, characterized by its flexibility, comprehensiveness, and interdisciplinarity. With this, the University seeks to prioritize the development and implementation of specific innovative didactics and experiential methodologies that involve the development of classroom projects, virtual lectures, formal and non-formal academic activities, tutoring and student support processes, fieldwork, laboratory and workshop practice, internships, pedagogical internships, business internships, healthcare internships, educational internships, and national and international internships.

Curricular design represents the result of work that responds to social demands in the training of professionals at different levels, constituting an educational project that serves as a guide and conditions the development of the process. Curricular design is developed based on three fundamental requirements:

1. From the foundations of curriculum theory, taking into account technical, practical, and critical-reflective interests.
2. From the structuralist perspectives typical of modernism and postmodernity, approaching the curriculum as a social practice that needs to be permanently reflected upon, constructed, and reconstructed so that it responds to the requirements of different social and productive groups in regional, national, and international environments with relevance, quality, and social equity.
3. In the process of professional technical education and by propaedeutic cycles, curricular design constitutes the integration of reflective know-how. In this way, it is considered the most appropriate way to respond, from the training perspective, to a definition of competence that integrates cognitive, motivational, and metacognitive components, as well as personality qualities.

The University of Cundinamarca considers lifelong learning, the understanding of contexts and situations that require reasoned decision-making, and the possibilities for analysis and criticism regarding various statements. These constitute forms of knowledge that must be strongly developed in the face of the changing state of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the advancement of knowledge regarding those aspects that society demands of future university professionals.

Within the framework of institutional transformation, one of the elements that significantly contributes to quality and relevance through flexibility is academic credits.

TRAINING PROCESS EVALUATION

The intention is not only to assess the amount of knowledge constructed, but rather its production from a comprehensive approach that contemplates the capacity developed, the utility, and the application of said knowledge, without leaving aside the attitudes assumed toward a specific academic program in terms of achieving the expected levels of competence in the student.

In accordance with the above, this process is systematic and dynamic, which facilitates the measurement, assessment, accreditation, and guidance of the educational process.

It is necessary to bear in mind that the conception of evaluation considers not only the assessment of learning but also the lachievement of a formative role, as it is considered an additional component of the process, promoting the consolidation of the learning achieved through teaching methodologies and the reorientation of actions to improve the level of performance.

MANAGEMENT

A social knowledge organization, such as the University of Cundinamarca, must consolidate and visualize itself as a conscious institution, featuring a defined strategic direction shared by the entire academic community, which establishes policies aimed at making the Institutional Educational Project possible. In this sense, priority has been given to governance, understood as practices oriented toward good governance, and by the latter, the use of appropriate governing techniques to achieve ethical, transparent, effective, and efficient results while respecting the balance of interests of social actors.

The University of Cundinamarca has taken on the challenge of generating, managing, and disseminating knowledge in a globalized world, characterized by a changing environment full of uncertainties, where the magnitude, speed, and impact of such changes demand a management approach that overcomes challenges and adapts efficiently to become and remain an efficient and competitive institution. This commitment, in the field of university governance, implies having sufficient flexibility to redesign its digital-natured governance and management structures and procedures, in order to increase its strategic capabilities by identifying priority areas, planning—with realistic criteria—its training and learning objectives, and its actions in the fields of science, technology, and innovation, university interaction, management, social responsibility, and sustainability.

University Welfare

University well-being is a foundational dimension that incorporates a set of actions aimed at: improving the quality of life of the members of the university community, promoting the comprehensive education of the student, ensuring student retention at the University, and providing guarantees for the democratic participation of the different constituencies.

University welfare is implemented through an integrated system of services in the areas of health, student retention, recreation, sports, and culture in order to promote the individual and collective development of students, professors, administrative staff, and workers, as well as education that fosters their role as promoters of healthy behaviors in their families, work environments, and society at large.