UAB-Banco Santander Ítaca financial aid-grants awarded

Vint joves amb talent inicien els estudis universitaris amb una beca-salari Ítaca uab-banco santande

Ana Ripoll, rector of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Emilio Botín, president of Banco Santander, awarded twenty students a UAB-Banco Santander Ítaca financial aid-grant on 30 September at an event that took place at Casa Convalescència. The students will enrol in undergraduate degrees at UAB.

01/10/2009

UAB and Banco Santander awarded twenty financial aid and enrolment grants to students who display high academic performance in school and come from difficult social or economic backgrounds. The objective of these combined grants and financial aid is to help students begin and continue with a university education. The grants were awarded to the students directly by Ana Ripoll, rector of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Emilio Botín, president of Banco Santander, in an event which took place on 30 September at Casa Convalescència in Barcelona.

The financial aid-grant includes a monthly salary of 500 euros paid for ten months every year and for the duration of the student's undergraduate studies. In addition to free tuition, if necessary students will be given free boarding at the UAB campus Vila Universitària.

All students awarded the financial aid-grant score an average of 9 or higher and come from different secondary schools located throughout Catalonia, mainly from the Vallès region and the metropolitan area of Barcelona, e.g. Sabadell, Terrassa, Rubí, Santa Coloma de Gramanet or L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.

With regard to gender, far more girls (16) than boys (4) received the grant. Although these students will go on to study in a variety of fields, many of them stated their interest in pursuing a career in the fields of biotechnology or health sciences.

This is the first initiative of its kind to be implemented in a university in Spain and has been possible thanks to the social commitment of both UAB and Banco Santander.

Since 1999, UAB and Banco Santander have collaborated in projects aimed to promoting an interest in university studies and making it possible for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to continue on to university. The Campus Ítaca programme is one of these initiatives and is based on a similar initiative carried out by the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. It is sponsored by Banco Santander through its Santander Universities Global Division.

Campus Ítaca is addressed to 15 year olds, before they begin their last compulsory year of secondary school and decide whether they continue on to university or not. University lecturers work with students during their two-week stay in solving problems and in showing them that intellectual efforts and overcoming difficulties can also be awarding.

The students awarded these financial aid and grants all come from secondary schools linked to Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona through the social educational programme Campus Ítaca.

Ten years of collaboration

Banco Santander's financial support in the past ten years has made it possible for UAB to implement several interuniversity mobility programmes with universities in Latin America, and other international teaching and research programmes with institutions in Eurasia and East Asia.

Other projects include UAB's collaboration with the Miguel de Cervantes virtual Library, the greatest collection of Spanish literature on the internet, and in the development of a portal on works in Catalan with the collaboration of the Joan Lluís Vives Institute.

Banco Santander collaborates in these and other initiatives offered by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona through its Santander Universities Global Division, through which the bank is socially commited to offering a stable alliance to over 750 academic centres in America, China, Portugal, Spain, Russia and UK.

Promoting technology transfer

The relation of the two entities can also be seen in the creation of six "UAB Research Park-Santander" Chairs of Transfer, which this year were awarded to researchers Adriana Kaplan from the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (UAB); Josep Lladós from the Computer Vision Centre and the Department of Computer Science (UAB); Ferran Martín from the Department of Electronic Engineering (UAB); Enric Querol from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (UAB); Gonzalo Seco from the Department of Telecommunications and Systems Engineering (UAB); and Leonor Ventosa from the Barcelona Institute of Materials Science (ICMAB-CSIC).

The chairs of transfer are run by the UAB Research Park. The role of Banco Santander, as part of the Research Park's board, is to act as an intermediary between the University and its research centres and society by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and research findings.