“They will remember me as the woman who governed the UASD with dialogue and agreement”

Rector of the UASD affirms that she will leave a legacy of modernization and internationalization in the academy

Professor Emma Polanco takes the credit for being the first and so far only woman to direct the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in its 484-year history.

On June 15, the new authorities of the Primacy of America will be elected, and at the same time an administration that gave little to talk about in terms of claims and popular demonstrations within the academy is closed.

In the voice of Rector Polanco, the key was dialogue and agreement. In the elCaribe-CDN Special Interview, the teacher spoke about the achievements obtained during the 2018-2022 period and the plans to resume face-to-face classes.

For the rector, it was four years of social commitment to the country and when asked how she wants to be remembered, she fluently says: “Emma Polanco will be remembered for being a woman who governed the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo with dialogue and agreement” .

He assures that from his position he advocated so that the problems within the campus did not reach violence.

Now, among his main legacies for the state university, in his words, are the modernization and internationalization of the UASD.

When he talks about modernization, he immediately alludes to the virtual classes, accelerated by COVID-19, to the technological investment and the available platforms.

And it is that with the pandemic, the UASD had no other way out than to reinvent itself. As Polanco explained, from the 300 virtual teaching sections offered by the university in March 2020, it increased to 30,240 with the distance modality.

Today, the house of higher studies has 13,400 virtual classrooms. In technology alone, the current administration has invested 116,747,000 pesos to date in the payment of licenses for computer applications and storage capacity to meet the service demands of more than 200,000 online users.

He said that in the last four years alone, 165,400 new students entered the academy for higher studies.

“That indicates that the UASD has taken an important position for the country, because people prefer the university.
We had a very small dropout in the pandemic, about 10% to 13%, but the students did not leave completely, but they made a stop in the pandemic in their studies and have been coming back again, “he said.

Students abroad

He also highlighted that a window was opened for students from the Dominican diaspora with the academic office that the UASD has at the Dominican Consulate in New York, which offers Dominicans residing in the United States the opportunity to complete their undergraduate studies. and postgraduate.

“Not only do we have in the United States, we have students from Spain, Canada and the islands, that is, the university is international, when we have an investiture, you invest from there (abroad),” he said.

In her four years in office, Rector Polanco has seen 44,000 undergraduate and 10,000 postgraduate students graduate.
“We have worked to leave a contribution to the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo because we have to break paradigms,” he said.

Along these lines, he highlighted the work on the embellishment, lighting and paving of the university campus in collaboration with government institutions.

His management is also credited with channeling the resources for the acquisition of a central air for the Pedro Mir Library, at a cost of 25 million pesos.

The support of President Abinader

In the company of the Teaching and Research and Postgraduate vice-chancellors, Alejandro Ozuna and Mauro Canario, respectively, the teacher assured that the UASD already has the greatest modernization in the Medicine career.

It refers to the simulation laboratories for students, enabled in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Engineering and Architecture and the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences with an investment of 234 million pesos, an amount assigned by the Executive Power.

Emma Polanco says she feels happy to have the support of the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, through the allocation of special items for programs and projects of the state university.

He says that the president is united by a special feeling with the UASD, an academy in which his father José Rafael Abinader served as administrative vice-rector.

He maintains that despite the small budget, the university has been able to operate within its limitations.

“You have to give the university what it needs because it is responsible for training the quality professionals that the Dominican Republic requires,” he said.

He argued that as part of the dialogue and agreement, a 30% increase in the salary of UASD teachers was made, applied in three readjustments, 5% in August 2018, 10% in February 2021 and 15% in January 2022. According to this management, in July 2018, the average salary in the teaching sector was 89 thousand 448 pesos per month, today it is 125 thousand 415.

A document delivered to this outlet specifies that for the same period the administrative staff had an average salary of RD$31,367 per month, at the time of presenting the report it was higher than RD$43,506.

Social work and health coverage

The administration headed by Emma Polanco notes among its achievements the support for the vaccination day, carried out through the Faculty of Health Sciences. In total, 116,822 doses were applied to the same number of patients who visited the university campus.

Along these lines, thanks to the 100% coverage of ARS-UASD health services, an investment of RD$486,648,643.69 was made in 2021 in favor of those who requested authorization for medical care, tests and studies among its 24,780 affiliates, of which a total of 3,634 are active teaching staff; 5,398 are administrative and 1,129 are retired teachers. The total coverage of the tests, as well as the diagnosis of Covid, presented an outlay of RD$46,565,286.63 and a total of RD$10,744,155.79 in emergency services as well as the payment of RD$61,075,063.99 in hospitalization and RD$4,005,389.48 for reimbursement. The sum of the two lines amounts to RD$122,389,895.89.

Participate in dialogue for reforms

Regarding the participation of the state university in the dialogue for the reforms proposed by the Government, the rector Emma Polanco maintained that the academy has a seat before the Economic and Social Council (CES) in the discussion. “We are working on the reforms that the government has proposed. We agree with the reforms that benefit the country, which is why we are concerned about participating not only in these types of reforms, but also in the Higher Education Law and everything that has to do with social security,” she pointed out. In addition, the UASD integrates, together with the Ministry of Labor, a table in which issues related to employability and human resources are discussed.

Attendance returns for the next semester

Emma Polanco explained why classes continue virtual on campus. She recalled that among the advantages offered by virtuality is that students from different provinces of the country can choose the subjects and the teacher they want regardless of where they are.

He maintains that changing to face-to-face modality in the middle of the semester is to upset the dynamic that has been carried out until now. However, he said that work is being done on the planning for after the end of this semester, on May 10, it will return to face-to-face. “It will continue in person, as it has always been, but we have to open virtual groups because we have students who perhaps prefer virtuality to distance,” said the rector in the ElCaribe-CDN Special Interview.

Emma Polanco
The only institution that offers hope to the Dominican people is the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo”