The Executive Director of the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE), Dr. David Julien, along with the Chancellor and the executive directors of the CAMPUS and IGLU Programs, attended the Universidad 2016 Conference. This is the 10^th annual conference on international higher education, held in Havana, Cuba, from February 16^th to 19^th, 2016, where they had the opportunity to analyze, reflect and exchange with more that 3000 participants made up of intellectuals, academics, and students from 60 countries on four continents.

The event was made possible due to the attendance of high-level Cuban, regional and global authorities which included the first Cuban Vice-President, Miguel Díaz-Canel; the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Rodolfo Alarcón Ortiz; the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, Qiang Tang; the Secretary General of the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), Paulo Speller; and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ex-President of East Timor, José Manuel Ramos-Horta.

Entitled “An Innovative University for Sustainable Human Development: Moving Towards 2030”, the topics that received the most attention in the meeting program were: culture of innovation and university expansion for sustainable human development; pedagogy for an innovative transformation of higher education; policies of innovation, science, technology and high-level training in universities and their commitment to inclusive and sustainable human development; and virtualization in higher education.

Also, for the IOHE, Innovation, Science and Technology; Leadership and Human Capital; Internationalization as well as Research and Academic Networks were seen as issues of up-most importance for the development of higher education across the Americas. In this event, the IOHE participated in the Workshop Internationalization of Higher Education and presented the main results of the Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAIE) during the period of 2010-2015.

“In addition to having the opportunity to hear excellent presentations on topics of great interest to the IOHE, the Conference Universidad 2016 allowed us to strengthen our collaborative relationship with the Cuban Minister of Higher Education and Cuban universities, and to outline a shared work plan involving concrete actions”, the Executive Director, Dr. Julien commented.

Since 1996, the Universidad Conferences were held every two years; they are intended to encourage a dialogue and debate among university leaders, senior national and international officers, researchers, professors, and students, on problems of great importance to the societies of participants’ countries and their higher education systems.