HR4RS stamp
Raul Garcia Hemonnet
The URJC wants to take a giant step with the implementation of POWER-U, a project that aims to incorporate the advantages that Artificial Intelligence brings to all the processes, services and groups of the Rey Juan Carlos University.
This was announced by the rector Javier Ramos, who has announced the imminent signing of a strategic agreement with the technology giant Microsoft for the design and development of this strategy that “involves betting on a university of the future,” Ramos noted during the celebration. of the Academic Act of Saint Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of universities, at the URJC.
Thanks to its alliance with Microsoft, the URJC will be “the first Spanish university to implement its AI tools in all our processes,” indicated the rector, who added that POWER-U “will allow us to be a better university.” Likewise, he recalled that this transformation “requires a great effort from the entire university community, for which a training plan will be developed that requires the commitment of all groups. Together we can make the URJC a benchmark for the application of AI in higher education,” said Ramos.
Furthermore, during his speech he called on universities in general and the URJC in particular to be the guarantors of technological progress, given the speed of changes in this area, that generates well-being while being equitable and sustainable. “It is the Academy that, in the first instance, causes scientific change, so, in the same way, we must be the ones who provide solutions to current dilemmas for ethical development. It is up to us to be heralds and protagonists of change or mere recipients. It will depend on whether our values, those of our country and those of Europe are those that shape the future or, on the contrary, we have to assume those of those who lead this change. ” said Ramos.
Before the rector, different representatives of the different groups of the URC, PDI, Students and PTGAS intervened.
The human factor of teaching
On behalf of the Teaching and Research Staff (PDI), the coordinator of the Journalism degree Manuel Montes Vozmediano took the floor and called on the teaching community to “in addition to mastering knowledge and having the skills and abilities to transmit it, take care of the human side.” of our profession. Every interaction with our students can make a difference.”
Montes Vozmediano has also pointed out the good employability figures of the URJC (first in Madrid and seventh in Spain) as something to be proud of and has pointed out the 2030 Strategic Plan as a great opportunity to reach “goals of equality, sustainability , diversity, well-being and inclusion. Each one of us can be an engine of change in objectives that are only achievable with collective effort,” he indicated.
Montes Vozmediano has also related the passion for what one does in life with the excellence of that activity and has ended his dissertation aspiring to confirm the syllogism: “I am a teacher, the teacher is privileged. “Then I am privileged.”
“Do not forget the boy or girl you were”
In a similar sense to what was expressed by Professor Vozmediano, the intervention of the representative of the student body, Belén Portillo Rodríguez, Student Delegate of the Translation and Interpreting degree, was developed. The student has called on the teachers and also the PTGAS to “not forget the boys and girls they have been when addressing the students. We are a great family". Likewise, the student added that teachers “have a beautiful profession with the power to help create or the risk of destroying a new world.”
Belén Portillo has also drawn attention to the importance of mental health for today's youth and has indicated that globalization and technological advance have been “a double-edged sword”, generating “an overload of information that, on many occasions, makes management impossible.” of day-to-day processes. In this sense, she has applauded the commitment to psychological care for students carried out by the University through the Healthy University service, from whose program a total of 150 students have benefited.
The event was completed with the intervention of Vicente Calvo, head of the Legal Department of the URJC and spokesperson for the PTGAS at the event, who reviewed how the legal status of the group has evolved through the different university laws of democracy, from the LRU, to the LOSU, passing through the LOU and the LOMLOU.
On the other hand, the festival of Saint Thomas Aquinas has allowed the University to award medals of honor and merit to people belonging to the PDI and the PTGAS.
The rector and the university community were accompanied at the event by Pilar Trinidad, subdelegate of the Government in Madrid and former general secretary of the URJC; Pedro González-Trevijano, former president of the Constitutional Court and former rector of the Rey Juan Carlos University, members of the municipal corporations of Alcorcón and Móstoles and the deputies of the Madrid Assembly, Pablo Posse and Mirina Cortés, from the Popular Party. The event also marked the debut as general secretary of Lourdes Meléndez.