The Governing Council approves the UB Plan for Languages for the period 2017-2020

The document highlights as priority work lines the development of the training offering in Catalan, Spanish, English and other languages of the UB and advance in language programs aimed at the teaching staff, the administrative and services staff, and the students.

Regarding the academic offering, it includes the Training scheme for Catalan language, from the Language Services; the Training scheme for Spanish as a foreign language, from Hispanic Studies; the Training scheme for third languages, from the School of Modern Languages, and the Training scheme for languages for internationalization of teaching, from the Institute of Education Sciences. The planned actions to be developed, which are available in this link, will cover the fields of institutional information and communication, management and administration, teaching and research fields, transference and dissemination.

Electronic vote, ready

One of the important issues approved of by the Governing Council was the regulation on the UB electronic signature and identification policy. This regulation implies, among other aspects, that the UB will be identified through the use of a seal of body based on a recognized electronic certificate. Members of the university community will identify themselves electronically through certificates that are recognized by the institution or with an electronic key system based on a user name and password, provided by the UB (link). This will enable the electronic signature of certain documents or proceedings that so far had to be signed in the traditional way.

The rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Elias, said the University of Barcelona will use the electronic vote for the first time in the next elections at the Senate, to be held in March, as long as pilots come out positive.

Another question of interest was the approval of the proposal on the review of the research PDA, which aims to promote precisely the quality of scientific contributions by the research staff and to favour a balanced curriculum for the PDI. One of the objectives of this renewal is to include aspects that are not gathered among the evaluation scales, such as management activities and scientific dissemination activities.

Regarding the administrative and services staff, the organizational modifications for the establishment plan (RLT) resulting from the application of the Organizational framework of governing bodies, which was published during the last Governing Council. Regarding the one on the teaching staff, the call for tenure track-2 lecture staff, publicly-employed professors, university-contracted professors, and tenured university lecturer vacancies -has been approved.

New university residence 

In his report, the rector Joan Elias mentioned the next opening of the new building of the Faculty of Law and the date of the day the first stone of the new UB university residence will be put, which will be located next to the Faculty of Pharmacy.

The rector also said there will be an extraordinary governing council in March to approve on the UB budget for 2018, and said a participative process for the university community has started to work on the new Communication Plan of the institution.