Gustavo Vega RECTOR, UNIVERSIDAD INTERNACIONAL DEL ECUADOR (UIDE)

What defines and influences UIDE?

Effectively, there is a set of pillars that form UIDE’s identity and essence. Our international focus uses the global context as the basis of all education and seeks to complement and strengthen our regional and national academia. Each of our schools is pushed to include an international frame of reference in their work. Moreover, we host guest professors from our partner universities overseas on a regular basis. Notably, our school of medicine has partnerships with universities worldwide, and ours is the only school of medicine whose graduates have a 100% success rate on the national test. Around 90% of executives at all the major car assemblers in Ecuador graduated from our engineering and robotics school. We have also founded multiple social projects, such as the Blue Hearts Program and COVIALITO, to add a social element to the disciplines of urban planning and road planning.

How have you improved the course offerings?

To start, we have pioneered online learning and adopted it as one of our flagship projects alongside the IMF International Business School. We have partnered with many universities to create dual-degree programs in areas such as cybersecurity, big data, criminology, and others. We are working on more than 20 new master’s programs. We continuously revise our curricula according to the market’s demands. We closely work with the government and academia on social programs to promote local and global movements and causes in areas such as violence against women and children with disabilities.