2020, the year of the UDA-Baños Campus

This year the UDA-Baños Campus is inaugurated. As of September 2020, the School and the Asunción School will operate in that educational complex.

We talked with the engineer Felipe Andrade, responsible for the construction of the project, about the origin of this initiative, the design of the eCUB and the area that is released on the university campus of 24 de Mayo Avenue.

The first thing we asked the engineer Andrade was when the history of the land in Baños began.

The University of Azuay, in the year 2000, experienced a very difficult stage with the landslides of the upper part of the hill of San Andrés, and suffered the structure of the University with the geological movement, to the point that it was about The Faculty of Science and Technology disappear. A good part of the Auditorium was also affected and there was a chapel of the Mothers of the Assumption that disappeared.

Then, Rector Mario Jaramillo decided to seek the option of a land to have an emerging exit plan, if the situation warranted it. And a land of 25.000 square meters was acquired in the upper part of what is now the land of the Jesuit community of the Rafael Borja College.

That remained almost 20 years virtually unused, until the current Rector Francisco Salgado made the decision to make the extension of the university campus in Baños.

This extension has two objectives: one, to mobilize there everything that is the School and the Asunción School, for the schedule from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon; and from three in the afternoon until ten at night to allocate it to everything that is fast technologies, whose course lasts from one to two years, for people who have not had the option of entering the university and who need to have a knowledge and a degree that allows you to practice your profession.

The idea with the Rector was always that the University has a greater relationship with society. The current situation of the country speaks for itself of the difficulty that high school students have today to enter the university. For many students the economic issue becomes an obstacle, a restriction to continue their studies.

Today, the idea is to give an option to people who did not enter the university but have already created a business - be it a carpentry, a bakery, a brassiere - and that we can provide a series of specific subjects and thus be able to improve Managing your own business.

This is aimed at an important sector and they target people who are between 30 and 50 years old. 

The location of the Baños Campus is strategic because it wants to collect all the people from Baños, from Cumbe, from Tarqui, from Narancay, which is the area of ​​influence of the area where the campus is located.

When did the works of the Baños Campus begin?

The study of everything that is design began in 2017. By 2018, February-March, we had practically ready the study. After analyzing with the Rector the way in which the project and financing should be executed, in April we had the decision ready.

With the Rector the option was taken to do it by direct administration management, because that way we saw that the University could generate a good resource of economic performance in its favor and, above all, thinking that the University itself has very good resources in the area of construction of civil works.

So the work started in June 2018 with a projection of 24 months of construction. A work that was planned to be done between 30 and 36 months, but the challenge was to reduce this period, making the work - with good liquidity - have a good performance in terms of the acceleration of products.

So the facilities would be functional in September of this year?

The bet we have made with the Rector is that by September the Asunción School and College will inaugurate this new campus and be definitely located in this area.

The rapid technologies project could start in 2021, as it is an initiative that is framed in the Higher Education Law and takes its time.

For now, it will be La Asunción that opens and makes use of a large and comfortable educational complex such as the Baños Campus, the largest in Cuenca and the province; We believe it could even be from the Austro region.

How has the space of the Campus Baños been diagrammed?

The builders have taken into account three things in particular: one, certify the project as a truly earthquake-resistant project, with all the required regulations.

Two, certify you with the green footprint, an environmentally friendly place. And third we will try a certification related to the landscape, to all the green areas that will be in the environment of the educational complex.

And most importantly, it must be the most technologically equipped. There is a budget of one and a half million dollars to invest in the technology of the complex.

What will the children of La Asunción find, a very different audience from university or postgraduate students?

First, cozy environments, accompanied by very friendly, colorful and colorful green areas.

You will find a security environment, because we have worked a lot on this subject.

We have permanent water supply systems, even independent of the parent network system. We have a first class sanitary system for everything that is wastewater evacuation and a first technology fire fighting system.

And also sports areas: we have multipurpose courts, a large courtyard that we have called the civic square and a soccer field that can be used not only by the School and the College but also by the University itself.

Many people at the University wonder what will happen to the university campus when La Asunción moves. What can be predicted about what will happen here after the move?

Our institution has grown over time. 50 years ago, when the first dawn of the University of Azuay began, there were a limited number of students.

And the city has been asking more and more and we have responded to the city and the province, and why not the region, to the nearby provinces.

But the Campus of 24 de Mayo Avenue has been very restricted. Therefore, with the change of La Asunción, an area that occupies almost 25% of the total campus is released.

All the remaining buildings for the benefit of the University, obviously, with a previous process of conditioning and improvements.

That is why this is a project that is one of the most important of the last 30 years of the University of Azuay and we are very glad to have been an active part of the construction of this complex.