• Universidad de Santiago has received a total of 259 foreign youngsters during the 2014 academic year, including the 123 foreign exchange students this semester. This upward trend in the past years is due the University’s excellent reputation. This semester, students from the Americas and Europe will be part of our University community.
• During the welcome ceremony held at the Espacio Isidora Aguirre, Dr. Sergio González, the Vice President of Outreach and Engagement, said that the good image of our University and its academic excellence, reflected in the last QS Ranking, among others, “has allowed us in the past two years to almost double the number of foreign students who choose our institution to pursue part of their university training.”

On October 9th, at the recently opened Espacio Isidora Aguirre of the Vice Presidency of Outreach and Engagement, (VIME, in Spanish), Universidad de Santiago held a welcome ceremony for the 123 exchange students that entered this semester.

These young students coming from universities in Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, the Unites States, France and Italy, considered together with the ones who arrived at the beginning of the year, total up to 259 foreign students at our University this year: a record for our institution.

At the ceremony, the Vice President of Outreach and Engagement, who headed the activity on behalf of the University President Juan Manuel Zolezzi, encouraged the students to enjoy their stay at our University. He said that they “are joining one of the best universities in Chile, which has been accredited for six years and is highly recognized both at a national and international level.”

Vice President González said that the University’s prestige, which is reflected in the last QS Ranking, “has allowed us in the past two years to almost double the number of foreign students who choose this institution to pursue part of their university training.”

He also detailed the programs preferred by these foreign students: “25 of them entered the Commercial Engineering program; 12, the Architecture program, and seven, the Journalism program. Regarding faculties, 45 entered the Faculty of Administration and Economics; 33 entered the Faculty of Humanities, and 18 entered the Faculty of Engineering.”

After welcoming the students who will stay for one or two semesters at our University, Carol Johnson, the Head of the Department of International and Inter-University Relations (DRII, in Spanish) said that the good number of exchange students is due, among other factors, to “the very positive opinion shared by the students who come to our University that, in turn, encourage foreign universities to increase the number of students that they send here.”

“At the same time- Carol Johnson added- we are signing new collaboration agreements with very good universities. Two of them are the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Leibniz Universität Hannover, in Germany. With them, we have collaboration in student exchange, research and others.”

The highest expectations

One of the foreign students entering the Commercial Engineering program at Universidad de Santiago is Flavie Rabovan, a student coming from the Polytech Lille, in France.

She said that, through this exchange experience, she seeks “to discover a new culture and new ways of studying and working.”

For his part, Iván Lozano, a student at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila (Mexico) who entered the School of Architecture, said that he has the highest expectations regarding his stay at our University.

“For all of us, entering this University is a very important step. We expect to grow as students, but particularly to grow as persons. This experience will stay with us for the rest of our lives,” he proudly concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

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