The Rector is the highest unipersonal authority responsible for governing the University and managing its assets in accordance with the provisions of the Corporation’s statutes. Rodrigo Vidal Rojas, PhD in Urban Planning, is currently in charge of the Rector’s Office.
See the Rector’s Office Website here
Rector’s Resume
Rodrigo Vidal Rojas is an Architect (U. del Bío-Bío, Chile), holds a Master’s in Social Sciences, and a Master’s in Urban Design (U. of Geneva, Switzerland), and a PhD. in Urbanism (U. de Lausanne, Switzerland). He has more than 30 years of professional, academic, and research experience in urban design, environmental sustainability of architecture, and religious and heritage architecture.
He has been assistant professor at the Institut Universitaire d’Etudes du Développement, U. of Geneva, (1993-1997); guest professor at the Departments of Sociology and Philosophy of the U. of Havana, Cuba (1995) and at the School of Architecture of the U. of Seville, Spain (2005); professor of the course “Four Approaches to Urban Space in Latin America” of the IDEA Institute’s Doctorate in American Studies; co-manager and guest professor of the Master’s Program in Regional Development and Environment, U. of Valparaíso.
Since 1997, he is full-time academic at the School of Architecture, USACH and a tenured professor since 2002. Since 2011, he has been a CNA Graduate Peer Evaluator; since 2003, ANID evaluator of FONDECYT and FONDEF projects. He is an active researcher of DICYT-USACH and the Cultural Heritage Fund; he has been a FONDECYT main researcher.
He is external evaluator of the journal AU, Arquitectura y Urbanismo, CUJAE, Havana, Cuba; member of the scientific committee of the journal Norte Grande, PUC; since 1995 he has participated in international courses and conferences. His book Fragmentation de la ville et nouveaux modes de composition urbaine (Paris 2000), was selected for the National Exhibition of the XIV Biennial of Architecture of Chile and his PhD thesis was distinguished with the Faculty Prize of the Université de Lausanne in 2000.
At USACH, he has been a member of the Research Council; Infrastructure and Campus Commission; Research Coord. and Director Esc. of Architecture; Academic Vice Rector; founder and former Director of the Integrated Master’s in Architectural Design (MIDA); member of the Postgraduate Program Evaluation Commission (CEPP), Academic Advisor and Candidate for Rector in 2018.
-See Rector Rodrigo Vidal Rojas’s resume.
Executive Director of the Rector’s Office
The Executive Director of the Rector’s Office supports and advises the authority in the control, coordination, and activation of tasks and/or action projects of the unit, to contribute to the fulfillment of the proposed goals.
It is a position of trust of the authority and its main activities include receiving and evaluating reports from various units, representing the authority in technical work commissions. The Executive Director is also responsible for analyzing and handling consultations, and coordinating meetings and activities of the authority, among others.
This task currently falls to Noemí Quintana Duarte.
Communications Management of the Rector’s Office
The mission of Communications Management is to cover and disseminate the various activities of the Rector’s Office of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, as well as to manage internal and external communication directly related to the Rector. Communications Management also works jointly with the Directorate of Strategic Communication, to provide guidelines and strategies to meet the main communication objectives of the institution.
Belén Pellegrini Pfeffer is currently in charge of this task.
General Directorate of Communications and Media
The General Directorate of Communications and Media is responsible for ensuring that the information generated by the institution is framed rigorously within the principles of the Communications Policy, whose purpose is to generate a point of convergence between the corporate strategy of the university, its identity and the image it projects, with the aim of aligning each of these points concretely towards the principles stated in the Mission, Vision, and Institutional Values.
Today this task is carried out by Belén Merino Solar.
The General Directorate of Communications and Media is made up of the following units:
Internal Communications and Marketing Unit, led by Daniela Gallardo Rouliez.
Media Unit, headed by Armando Jaque Ávila.
Radio Unit, headed by Hugo García Lagos.
Television Unit, headed by Esteban Estay Rosales.
University Ombudsman Unit
The purpose of this unit is to defend the human and labor rights of the members of the Usach community.
Unit for the Promotion of Good Practices
This unit promotes standards of conduct contained in constitutional, legal, administrative, and public ethics norms and recommendations for the public function; to take concrete preventive actions in the face of recurring conflicts or identified threats to avoid the escalation of situations contrary to the standards of official conduct; develop institutional procedures to propose a resolution of conflicts between members of the university community, through mediation and other voluntary measures, to prevent subsequent disciplinary proceedings; periodically update the ethical standards for all members of the university community, including new possible risk actions that may be identified, either by modernization of technology or other considerations and others that the Rector’s Office may request.
This task is currently performed by Elena Galindo Arévalo.