Academics, managers and heads of doctoral training programmes from ten Latin American countries gathered at the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) to examine alternative ways of enhancing the supervision of doctoral theses and sharing institutional experiences. The team coordinating the seminar was made up of professors from the URV who have been organizing workshops on doctoral supervision since 2012

From 7 to 9 September, a total of 35 representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay shared their experiences regarding institutional processes for thesis optimization. The aim of the international seminar was to evaluate alternative ways of enhancing the supervision of doctoral theses and to share and exchange experiences regarding institutional processes for optimizing theses.

The event was conducted by the international initiative for academic cooperation which has been set up between the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the Universidad del Valle and the Asociación Universitaria Iberoamericana de Postgrado – AUIP. The members of the academic team responsible for coordinating the seminar were Francisco Diaz, Director of the Postgraduate and Doctoral School; Mar Figueras, Head of the Postgraduate and Doctoral School; Joan Josep Carvajal, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Ercilia García, Professor of Business Management. The University has been participating in initiatives to train doctoral supervisors since 2012.

The ” International Itinerant Seminar-Workshop on Training Doctors and Researchers: Thesis Optimization” took place in the second week of September and there will be a further three editions in Argentina, Mexico and Peru next year.

The first year of the seminar-workshop outside the European Union intends to foster collective thinking on management practice and the management of doctoral thesis in countries in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.