“The Ministry of Education and the Government of Chile remain committed to finding an alternative that will allow us to materialize this tremendous, ambitious but necessary project in the short term,” said the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo.
This Monday, the unveiling of the final design project model of the Institute and School of Engineering of the University of O’Higgins (UOH), Rengo headquarters, which will be located in the El Naranjal sector, took place in front of the municipal building in Rengo.
The activity was attended by the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo, the mayor of Rengo, Carlos Soto, the rector of the University of O’Higgins, Fernanda Kri, among other authorities, in addition to the presentation of a group of students who make up the symphony orchestra of the El Naranjal School, Magaly Fuentes.
Firstly, Carlos Soto announced that this Monday a definitive life will begin to be given to an emblematic project, loved and desired by the residents, since the desire is to establish the heart of the O’Higgins region in Rengo, with a serious project after the University of Valparaíso was abandoned, assuring that on this occasion the same mistakes of the past will not be made.
For her part, the rector of the UOH, Fernanda Kri, highlighted the commitment that exists with this project, recalling that the university carries out applied research on local problems, with advanced accreditation, with more than 7 thousand undergraduate students, distributed in 27 degrees, with two doctoral programs and 5 master’s programs, with the university’s researchers carrying out more than 250 publications in high-impact journals worldwide in 2023. Over 90 percent of the students are from the O’Higgins region, with more than a thousand graduates and more than 95 percent of them working in the region, which has generated a mass of professionals who are a great contribution to regional development.
One of the challenges, said the principal, is regional coverage, since currently the students are concentrated in Rancagua and the surrounding communities, so the commitment is to be able to reach the entire region and fight against centralism. She says that having a campus in Rengo will help this decentralization and will improve the regional coverage that we have today. She added that having a campus in this community will precisely allow us to have students from Rengo, but also from other regions, since the metro train is practically at the doors of the educational institution.
The design of the campus was financed thanks to an FNDR project, it has the building permits, and the land on which it will be built exists, however, financing for said construction must currently be obtained. That is why the rector hopes that all organizations will commit to obtaining said resources.
In this regard, Governor Pablo Silva stated that more than 800 million pesos were financed for the design of this project, including the commitment to finance part of the construction of the faculty in Rengo, recalling the history of some students from the region, who have been the first generation of university students and, had the University of O’Higgins not existed, would not have been able to achieve it.
SHORT-TERM COMMITMENT
In his speech, the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo, recalled that the University in Rengo is the materialization of a commitment that has been dragging on for quite some time, due to the poor execution of a good idea that at one time was the University of Valparaíso in the commune.
He highlighted the current project of the University of O’Higgins, which has been consolidated with a view from the territory, maintaining that what cannot happen is that an expansion project ends up causing harm to the communities rather than a benefit, believing that the case of Rengo is not like that, since the University of O’Higgins is rooted in the territory and has the possibility of continuing to expand in an area as important as engineering.
The minister argued that what is coming now is how to take charge of this effort that has been made, in its form and, not in discussing whether an initiative like this will be carried out. This is why he hopes that in the coming months the way in which this initiative will be carried out will be announced, which is not minor, ambitious, at the level of the best engineering schools in the country. “The Ministry of Education and the Government of Chile maintain their commitment to seek an alternative that allows us to materialize in the short term this tremendous project, ambitious, but necessary and fair for a region that, I insist, so far and so close to the center, today requires to repair these debts that have been dragging on for a long time. In addition, it allows us to expand a project as powerful and potent as the University of O’Higgins, which was established and won an important part of the heart not only of the region, I would say a fundamental space in the Council of Rectors and, in our higher education system at a national level,” said Minister Cataldo.
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