The Board of Trustees of the FUB designates Josep-Eladi Baños as candidate for the rector of the UVic-UCC

The Board of Trustees of the Balmes University Foundation (FUB) has designated Josep-Eladi Baños as a candidate for the position of rector of the UVic-UCC. At the plenary session that took place on Friday 30 November, the University's trustees selected Amat as a candidate to present his programme for government to the community at an extraordinary meeting of the Senate that will take place on 11 December. The candidate will submit his programme, and the Senate will vote on it and issue a non-binding report on its content. After the decision by the community, the Board of Trustees will decide on Baños' appointment.

At a press conference held in the Doctor Junyent hall in the Casa Convalescència building after the meeting of the Board of Trustees, the Board's president and the Mayor of Vic, Anna Erra, described the candidate as a person "with a great academic record", with great expertise "in research and teaching and a great capacity for management" who "will consolidate the University's project based on internationalisation, teaching, research and territorial growth." The first vice-president of the FUB and Mayor of Manresa, Valentí Junyent, described Baños' governance plan as "comprehensive and meeting all the UVic-UCC's governance needs." He emphasised that as a candidate for rector, he is "an encouraging choice, as he understands this University which has its own personality." Meanwhile, the Government of Catalonia's director general for Universities, Josep Pallarès, who is also a trustee of the FUB, emphasised the UVic-UCC's resoluteness in having coped with two open competitive processes in such a short period of time. "It has been a very good stress test, which has attracted two magnificent candidates for the position of rector," said Pallarès, who said that "the icing on the cake was the transition period, which could have been very difficult, but was very simple thanks to the acting rector Joan Masnou."

Selection process

The deadline for presenting the documentation necessary to apply for the position of rector expired on 15 October, with 13 people having submitted the documents required. Three of these candidates met the requirements that were specified in the call. The Selection Committee studied them and agreed to refer Baños' candidature to the Executive Committee of the FUB Board of Trustees for the Board to designate him. At this point, the president of the Selection Committee for the new rector and trustee of the FUB, Josep Arimany, explained that the candidate was chosen unanimously and emphasised his "multi-faceted profile in the university field." As Arimany pointed out, the committee took into consideration Baños' "profile related to educational and pedagogical needs, his sensitivity to the institution's territorial and governance issues, and his desire for a close relationship with the university community."

The new rector will take over from Joan Masnou, who Erra thanked for "his commitment to the institution and professional and personal excellence at the head of the Rector's Office during this interim period." The president also highlighted the attitude of the university community, which "coped with the transition period and was also responsible for the ease of this new and unexpected situation." Masnou has been at the head of the institution since July, as acting rector after the candidate Oriol Amat withdrew for personal reasons at the end of June. Amat was going to replace Jordi Montaña, who completed his second term of office as the academic head of the UVic-UCC in July.

Biography

Josep-Eladi Baños Díez (Sabadell, 1958) is a Doctor of Medicine and Professor of Pharmacology at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). He is the director of the Educational Research Group in Health Sciences (2017) and the Government of Catalonia's Margalida Comas Programme for teaching excellence in the Catalan universities (2017). In the administrative field, he has been the vice-rector for Teaching and Academic Planning (2005-2013) and Vice-dean of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences (2004-2005).

He was a lecturer in Pharmacology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (1983-2002), a visiting lecturer at the University of Chile (2003-2011) and an associate of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (2009-2011).

He is a leading figure in the field of teaching innovation, and he specialises in the application of problem-based learning models and the use of humanities (cinema, literature and television series) in teaching. He has authored or co-authored more than six hundred publications, of which seventy are in the field of university education. He has received several awards for teaching quality, including the third national prize for research and educational innovation from the Ministry of Education and Science (2006) and four Vicens Vives awards for teaching innovation from the Government of Catalonia (2005, 2009, 2013 and 2015).