Education Never Stops. National and International Continuing Education at UNAM

Continuing education, in its most simple conception, is, from my point of view, the transforming element of humanity over time through learning, the deepening of knowledge, and the development of skills and abilities that have been with us since the appearance of human beings on Earth. In this sense, we can go back to the origins of Homo sapiens and see how they learned to hunt more effectively their prey; to cultivate the land and raise animals, making sedentary life possible, or we can also exemplify the process through the learning of different trades by craftspeople.

In the 17^th Century, continuing education was considered as a professional updating process. In the mid-18^th century, with the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, the forms of production changed, requiring new technical and scientific knowledge, skills, and specialties that transformed society as a whole. At the end of the 19^th Century, Frederick Taylor’s scientific managing strongly motivated the specialization processes to improve companies’ productivity. And in the first two decades of the 20^th Century, the idea of continuing education as an educational category emerged in the United States.

The first continuing education activities at UNAM started in 1933, after the first Medical Conferences were held at the then-called National School of Medicine. In 1959, when the National School of Engineering became a Faculty, continuing education activities also began with courses on sanitary engineering. But it was not until 1971 that the first Continuing Education Department of UNAM was officially created in that faculty.

So, for half a century, continuing education has been an essential modality for UNAM and for the country’s development in terms of human resources training.

THE CREATION OF THE CONTINUING EDUCATION NETWORK
In 1986, UNAM’s Continuing Education Commission was formed, from which a project of guidelines for continuing education courses was developed. In 1992, this commission was transformed into the Coordination of Continuing Education, attached to UJNAM’s General Secretariat (CUAED, 2019, p. 6), to create collaborative and collegial work in continuing education:
In mid-2013, a Rector’s agreement incorporated REDEC into the Secretariat for Institutional Development. In 2016, the University Council approved the current General Regulations for Continuing Education, and finally, in May 2017, REDEC’s Internal Regulations were approved. Since the beginning of that year, several activities have been carried out annually within REDEC, including a) integration of the working committees’ annual work plans (committees are described below), b) analysis of issues in plenary sessions, c) best practices workshops, d) internal training programs for representatives, e) advice on the management of liaison and collaboration instruments with external entities, and f) dissemination of activities offered by the Continuing Education Units.

REDEC is organized into five working committees: Administrative Matters, Training, Communication, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Regulations.

As we can see, UNAM has a robust, orderly, coordinated, and regulated continuing education network that intends to provide continuing education activities at the highest level, supported additionally by transversal inter-, trans-, and multidisciplinary axis.

REDEC is a network of university collaboration composed of more than 120 representatives of the different schools, faculties, centers, institutes, departments, and university programs that make up UNAM, nationally and internationally. Through them, various updating and specialization programs are offered, open to the general public, both to individuals and organizations that require academic programs of the highest quality and aligned with the needs of today’s world, as mentioned in the introduction to its web page (https://educacioncontinua.unam.mx/).

• All of UNAM’s academic entities offer continuing education activities in three modalities: face to face, distance or hybrid, which are mainly focused on the area of knowledge of the careers taught at each of the university campuses.
• Continuing education is open to the general public; however, it is essential to note that one of the primary objectives of REDEC, according to its internal regulations, is “to facilitate interaction, collaboration, and exchange with companies, organizations, associations, and national and international educational institutions for the collaborative generation of innovative continuing education activities” (UNAM, s. d., p. 1).

STRENGTHS OF CONTINUING EDUCATION AT UNAM
UNAM has made a special effort to ensure the quality and relevance of continuing education activities; therefore, all actions with this designation undergo an evaluation process carried out by the Internal Committee on Continuing Education, in which specialists evaluate elements as content’s topicality and correct distribution, curricular relevance, faculty and duration of the activity, and forms of evaluation and accreditation.

In addition, the Internal Committees on Continuing Education have the institutional task of promoting academic proposals that provide innovative approaches to address current social phenomena; in other words, they always seek to deliver cutting-edge knowledge.

Another of the strengths of Continuing Education at UNAM is the transfer of knowledge from research carried out there; a significant number of researchers are faculty participating in Continuing Education. They join the trainers and facilitators to organize and deliver these courses. Finally, it is important to mention UNAM’s Continuing Education results: only in 2022, approximately 1.5 million people attended 10 thousand continuing education activities.

UNAM ABROAD
REDEC has international presence thanks to UNAM’s Offices in the United States (Boston, Los Angeles, Tucson, Chicago, and San Antonio), Canada, Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

And, also t hrough REDEC, UNAM is a member of three important university international networks: the Public Macro-Universities Network in Latin America and the Caribbean (see page 212 in this issue of UNAM Internacional), the Union of Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (UDUAL), and t he Latin American Continuing Education Network (RECLA).

These networks promote academic and knowledge liaison and exchange, as well as training for developing good practices in the management of Continuing Education.

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