Postgraduate - High Schools - Icesi University - Cali- Colombia -

To educate sociologists ideal in the knowledge, critical evaluation and applied practice of models, strategies, and competencies of social intervention in urban contexts.

To educate of students with an ample critical and analytical sense of the social reality, who constantly question this reality.

To educate students who manage skillfully the techniques and models of intervention and investigation in order to transform social reality.

To generate in the students’ work, interest in reflecting on local problems and development of skills which permit the adequate design of models of intervention, adjusted to the necessities of the region and the city.

To prepare the student for the process of Active Learning where he or she identifies the urgent necessity to appeal to social sciences for the understanding and intervention of the social reality in its extreme complexity.This means the appraisal, recognition and capacity to work in conjunction with related disciplines.

The candidate should have a special interest in the area of social sciences and be inquisitive about themes related to national, regional and local social life.

The discipline requires motivated people, who for their personal and intellectual development, are attentive to the development of national life, consumers of news, cultural programs and assiduous readers of newspapers and periodical communications about culture, politics and social development.

The Sociology student should assume leadership as his or her own process of learning in order to develop as a subject who thinks and learns by him- or herself.

This student should take advantage of his educational process to strengthen a rigorous capacity of analysis and synthesis adapted of his or her abilities and cognitive capacities.

Given his or her inquisitiveness for social sciences, the student should question, in an explicit and permanent manner, the characteristics of social life and its implications and development in time. Thus, it is necessary to understand the importance of multidiscipline as requirement for the understanding of the complex social reality.

The graduate sociologist of Icesi University is a professional capable of analyzing the national social reality and consequently designing, managing, applying and evaluating projects and investigative programs and social interventions to the necessities and problems of a determined population group, from a perspective of ample structure which takes into account the complexity of social phenomena.

For this reason, the graduate may work as project director of interventions, and applied investigations, as a consultant, auditor, or evaluator associated with governmental or non-governmental institutions who sometimes act as an executing agent or financer of social projects.

Today, in our region it is essential to depend on sociologists with a strong interest in two areas: professionals with an ample knowledge of systematization, analysis and evaluation experiences and professionals with a high capacity of management of projects. This, on the one hand, allows the generation of coherent and systematic social intervention; and on the other hand, allows the continuity of social actions. Both of these are seeking a positive social impact.

For several years and mainly during the last decade, the State Agencies, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and International Agencies have financed and executed intervention and investigative projects oriented towards knowing and impacting on the social problems in Cali and the southeastern region of Colombia. From this perspective, the social climate as well as the institutional climate is highly appropriate for Sociologists.

Certain data states that the investment in social intervention projects last year in Cali was approximately fifty million dollars ($50,000,000 US). If this conjecture is important, it is important to remember that especially in the last decade, the region and emphatically the city have been the object of interventions lead by recognized national and international institutions. This is important because although today there are high investments in diverse forms of intervention, the previous years show evidence of the existence of permanent spaces where sociologists have been developing multiple projects and initiatives.

Therefore, professionals capable of analyzing all types of intervention which are being carried out, their scope and limitation, but most importantly, a sociologist with the tools to mediate in these processes is needed. This professional, who is in conditions to contextualize the distinct experiences of the different population groups of the region, analyze them, and propose options of collective civic construction with these groups, is a must.

Consultant
Advusir and Analyst
Social Manager
Investigator
Functionary of International NGOs

Developer of Public Opinion
Columnist.
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