Universidad del Magdalena

The Program aims to articulate universal anthropological knowledge with the knowledge of our region to provide an understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of regional and national identity. Research with social projection is fundamental in the solution of social, cultural, economic, and environmental problems, and the integration of the University and the Program with the Region.

The Program expects to become, before 2025, the best alternative in the validation of the elements that contribute to the development of the community and the conformation of regional identity processes.

• The Program will offer programmatic contents that will help it achieve recognition at the national level due to its relevance to the region.
• The Program will develop strategies to reconstruct the collective memory and the phenomena in the Region.
• The Program will be linked to the social development of the different sectors of the department and the city to consolidate the groups of researchers that are dedicated to disciplinary and interdisciplinary research.

The Anthropology Program of University of Magdalena began work from the second semester of 2000 through the creation of Academic Agreement 014 of July 11, 2000.  According to that Agreement, the Program had a syllabus with eight (8) academic semesters, with 160 credits, which was equivalent to studying 38 subjects. Since then, three curricular reforms have been carried out.

The first modification was in 2002, in the framework of the Integral Academic Reform of the University based on Academic Agreement 025 of 2002. This reform modified the curriculum of the Anthropology Program in nine semesters, organized in four (4) formative cycles: General, Faculty, Professionalization and Professional Practices (Academic Agreement 025 of 2002 Universidad del Magdalena). This reform reduced the number of credits per subject and semester, which surpassed 48 hours per week of student work. Likewise, it allowed eliminating the prerequisites to give flexibility to the curriculum and allowed increasing the number of subjects to fifty-five (55) and decreasing the total number of credits to 150.

The second modification of curriculum was the application of Agreement 016 of 2007 that guides the Formative Research Axis. This Agreement sought to promote research in all the programs of the University; however, the Anthropology Program already had a similar axis for the investigative nature of the discipline although this line had a strong emphasis on social anthropology.

In 2010, the University of Magdalena included a new reform to the General Training of the undergraduate programs; the Academic Agreement 031 of 2010 regulated this modification. In this agreement, the competences the students must reach are defined; they are generic competences (Academic Agreement 031 of 2010 Universidad del Magdalena) in accordance with what was stated by the Tuning project for Latin America and by the Ministry of National Education (MEN,Tuning project, 2007).

Similarly, the Academic Agreement 032 of 2010 modified the Academic Agreement 016 of 2007 that regulates the Training Research Area of ??the Undergraduate Programs. This modification regulates the research axis and reduces the number of credits of this Axis, from 13 to 10 credits (Academic Agreement 032 of 2010 Universidad del Magdalena). However, the Anthropology Program considered that it was important that the initial number of credits proposed for the Hub be maintained, given its investigative emphasis.

In 2009, the Program Self-Evaluation Committee was formally established, which made it possible to make the strengths and weaknesses of the Anthropology Program visible in a critical and constructive manner. For this committee the program followed the guidelines stipulated by the National Accreditation Center (CNA) for the Accreditation for High Quality of the Undergraduate Programs in Colombia (CNA, 2006). After a 2-year process, at the end of 2011, the Self-Assessment Document was sent for high quality accreditation to the National Accreditation Board. The CNA, once the evaluation process was completed, granted institutional accreditation to the Anthropology Program for 4 years under resolution 16172 of December 20, 2012 (Resolution 16172 of the MEN).