Dean of Extension and Culture Office’s Mission
The Dean Of Extension and Culture Office intends to strengthen the university’s extension actions, reinforcing UFOP’s role in the effort’s mobilization of the academic community and of other segments of society, to the construction of processes of knowledge and transformation of social realities in consonance with UFOP’s Institutional Politics, and also with the National Politics of University Extension, aiming for transversality, inclusion, dialogue, and appreciation of actions in a human and conscious form.
Dean of Extension and Culture Office’s Values
- Socio-environmental responsibility
The reflection over socio-environmental responsibility is inserted in a wide debate in face of the ethical and political claims to a social experience marked by relations of respect to dignity and to the fundamental rights of human beings. This responsibility emerges as a value capable of orienting extension practices in direction to new economically viable developmental proposals, socially fair, environmentally sustainable, and politically free and participative. The socio-environmental responsibility as a value, indicates a movement towards a greater participation of UFOP’s academic community in the construction of public politics in three areas of administration. The participation of interlocutors to debates of public and social interest constitutes ways to amplify the university’s interface with the environments in which it is inserted.
- Respect to the Pluralism of Ideas
It implicates the recognition that individuals and different social groups watch and describe reality from different points of view, informed by their own life experiences. This value’s fundamental premise is the search for mechanisms which favor the expression of all participants in society’s construction and transformation processes, reducing the possibility of the existence of privileged perspectives in the contexts of communication. The idea is that some reality aspects may be more or less visible or relevant according to the speaker’s position, in a way that different perspectives tend to be complementary between themselves, and the access to these points of view allows for a better recognition of the operating scenario. The respect to the pluralism of ideas privileges the arguments authority, in which premises are clearly described and shared, held at the argument of authority, that tends to disguise the relations of force when substituting premises, demonstration, and analysis, through a view supposedly more authorized of a group over others. It’s not fit to PROEX, its committees, nor other instances the duty of authorizing or recognizing the existence of several possibilities of social commitments capable of integrating extension practices. Yet, not every ideological concept is aligned with the pluralism of ideas. Any conviction that seeks hegemony, looking to prove superiority of its own perspective, is not compatible with this value.
- Community Role
Faced with social contexts permeated by exclusionary identity dynamics, several social segments sought to respond to power relations by being organized in movements and collectives (unions, neighborhood associations, groups engaged in social causes). These instances, committed to improving the living conditions of the population to which they belong, make valuable contributions in terms of difficulties in recognizing their demands and the priorities that communities list in their struggles and achievements. Hence the importance of establishing an extension policy at UFOP in close dialogue with the daily engagement, already implemented in the communities by the residents themselves or professional agents who work there. Assuming the community role as a value for university extension implies an effort for the actions produced by UFOP to be proposed, monitored and evaluated together with the community members, and that even positions occupied in the project implementation process are negotiated according to everyday experiences and needs.
- Dialogue between extension actions
Internal dialogue implies that extension projects tend to be enriched in interaction with the academic community. This brings into discussion the effort for extension actions to be presented within UFOP, as well as the possibility of distinct projects and programs, carrying out collaborative actions. In addition, there is a clear gain in improving both the processes of the Extension Studies Office, as well as in the dynamics of drafting the university extension policy, involving professors, students, administrative and technical staff and community members. The expectation is that the greater interaction between projects will allow the promotion of a continuous self-criticism regarding the priorities and extension instruments at UFOP. Therefore, PROEX improvement and evaluation procedures must be constantly compared with the demands and effective possibilities of extension practice, welcoming suggestions and questions presented by employees , simulating the participation of professors in positions and committees for previously defined periods, offering training and advice to those who work with PROEX. Only in this way can the academic community and the extension projects specifically, safeguard the conditions required for a democratic and inclusive debate that avoids too much technicalities, bureaucratization, and the theoretical-conceptual and operational hardening.
- Knowledge Formation and Integration
It is intended that extension acts as a reciprocal formative pole between University and community spaces, thus favoring a continuous and creative re-elaboration of both academic and social knowledge and practice. Thus, it is postulated that intellectual reflection becomes more marked when promoted in effective dialogue with society demands and movements, rather than turning to the “other” as an “object” of scientific or sociopolitical interest. Therefore, it is essential that the experiences of extension activities maintain an interface with the systematized knowledge in different modalities, from short events to elective courses, which count on the presence of several agents involved with the extension, and not only with members from the University community. At the same time, it is important that such experiences are recorded in different languages and disseminated (videos, printed newspapers, murals, electronic media, articles in popular and scientific journals), in order to share the extension practices and interpretations connected to them, in an effective process of know-how innovation.
PROEX missions and values seek to create instruments for better understanding of UFOP’s extension practices. If you have any suggestion of how to help and make us work better, send an email to falaproex@ufop.edu.br, with the subject: “Sugestão Missão” (mission suggestion). Your opinion is important for us!
