MEN visit for registration renewal

As part of the Qualified Registration Renewal process, the Ministry of National Education has scheduled a visit by Academic Peers between September 5 and 7 to verify the quality conditions of the following academic programs:

1. Zootechnics Fusagasugá
2. Systems Engineering Fusagasugá
3. Systems Engineering Facatativá
4. Environmental Engineering Girardot (ALD Facatativá)

The Academic Vice-Rector's Office calls on faculty, students, and staff to cooperate with the requirements requested in this process.

SEE STATEMENT 012

What is an academic peer?

(Source: CNA)

Academic peers are the fundamental support for the accreditation process.

Pair It means equal or completely similar. Strictly speaking, a peer is similar insofar as they can be recognized by members of the community as one of their own. However, in the accreditation process, the peer is responsible for making a judgment about quality, so they must be recognized by the community that professionally identifies them as someone with the authority to make that judgment.

Qualities of the Academic Peer

Peer reviewers have a specific role in the accreditation process: they are responsible for judging quality during the external evaluation stage. As prominent members of their academic communities, peer reviewers are primarily recognized by the way they perform their duties within their field. They are also representatives of academic culture, which is why they are known as "peer reviewers." Typically, peer reviewers conduct research and teach and are recognized as professors, researchers, or other distinguished professionals.

Given appropriate conditions, peers are capable of forming schools of thought; in the institutions where they work they are responsible for promoting integration with national and international academic communities and for disseminating the most important advances in their field among their colleagues.

Ideally, the peer reviewer should also be someone capable of making society aware of the most significant potential social impacts of work in their specific area; in fact, the peer reviewer should contribute to cultural transformation using the tools specific to their field. Knowledge of the principles, assumptions, and implications of their work allows academic peers to comprehensively examine training processes in their field.

Although knowledge is the fundamental quality of a peer reviewer, certain personality traits are undoubtedly crucial to fulfilling their role: The academic peer must be sensitive to the differences between the projects they examine and their own. They must be able to understand and value the program within the context of an Institutional Project that they understand and respect, without this implying a disregard for the high-quality standards that the law mandates for accreditation. This entails considering not only the program's inherent universal dimensions but also the academic tradition within which it is situated and the institutional tradition in which the program is offered.

The peer reviewer does not examine an academic program devoid of context; they must understand the social role that the program plays and evaluate it responsibly. This requires examining how the program responds to community needs.

The peer reviewer recognizes that the external evaluation presents an opportunity to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of an academic program in order to effectively contribute to improving its quality. This entails embracing criticism in the most academic sense of the term, that is, as the ability to emphasize what deserves to be emphasized, and not as a one-sided exploration of what should be rejected.

The pair must adhere to the principles of genuine communication. They must be truthful, sincere, and respectful, and they must use clear and understandable language.

The peer must be upright, that is, he must recognize the rules of the task he performs and act with prudence, honesty and responsibility.

The peer reviewer is a member of the academic community and does not represent any institution. Their evaluation is not based on comparisons with the institution where they work or where they were trained, but rather on academic criteria.

The peer is an expert on the paradigm being examined, not a proponent of that paradigm or any other. When dealing with conflicting paradigms, and the peer does not share the approach under examination, they must be able to recognize the internal conditions of validity of the paradigm being judged, regardless of their critical stance toward it. In any case, the fact that the peers form a team should guarantee balance and objectivity in the judgment.