Programme of Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) of the Flemish Interuniversity Council with the Universidad de Cuenca in Ecuador

Developmental overall objective: The Universidad de Cuenca aims at training graduates with the right skills and ethical attitudes in order to help the country reaching an improved quality of life for all Ecuadorians, and not only for a privileged group of the society. Furthermore a relevant research capacity will be enhanced in order to contribute to the development of the society's science and technological platform as leverage for the socio-economic development of the region and the nation. The central theme is the improvement of the quality of life at the Austro-Ecuatoriano, the provinces in the Andes around Cuenca, by strengthening relevant teaching and research. The Universidad de Cuenca being a comprehensive university has a wide range in disciplines across the spectrum relevant to the central theme. Each of the vertical academic projects envisages education/ training and research by a multidisciplinary approach. The transversal project aims at institutional management and change to create a more dynamic institution stimulating the research and teaching innovations. Academic overall objective: The overall objective is to improve the quality of teaching, research and services at the Universidad de Cuenca, so that UCuenca increases its relevance to the development and improvement of the quality of life in the region. This objective requires changing into a more stimulating institutional and organisational structure and the execution of a number of selected thematic academic projects

Specific Development Objective: Recommendations and advice for regional development based on the research findings become available. Although the University of Cuenca is already recognized as a major actor in the region, it is felt that a university should deliver advice which is more up-to-date and based on active research. Now the recommendations by the university are too often at level of what a good consultant office could deliver. Specific Academic Objective: The institutional change and cross-cutting activities contribute to more effective time for research and lead to a higher academic level of teaching and research output. An academic capacity for research, better teaching and MSc-programmes are being developed by the vertical academic projects. P1 -