“It is a pleasure to welcome everyone to the opening class of this new academic year. I feel as if I have been transported back to that sense of new beginnings and endless possibilities that I experienced from my first days in biomedicine school. In our new digital world, there may no longer be blank notebook pages, but every year the feeling is one of starting anew.”
Opening of the speech by Dr. Ana Carolina Puga
In 2021, we have the privilege of welcoming new students at all Nepuga/FAPUGA units in 9 Brazilian states, drawn to our institution by the quality of our undergraduate programs, our exceptional faculty, and our pioneering reputation in the aesthetics field. In the opening class speech, Dr. Ana Carolina adds:
“Last week, I welcomed 1,665 postgraduate students at Nepuga, and as always our doctors begin the course with an immense desire to learn new techniques and become professionals in one of the fastest-growing fields in the market. Excited and optimistic, the new students join the nearly 5,000 students who are starting undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Nepuga/FAPUGA.”
To meet the great demand, we added 29 new professors to our staff, and we are also studying the creation of new campuses. The expectation is that they will grow to expand the frontiers of knowledge, improving the practice of new techniques and methodologies and deepening the understanding of concepts and aspects of human anatomy.
In this opening class, we also welcome the new Coordinator of the AGPG (Association of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students), Dr. Bruna Mosquim, and all the staff members who were already part of Nepuga/FAPUGA and are starting the new academic year with the same commitment to expanding educational opportunities for all students.
Now, the new members of our community join us at a time when higher education is undergoing a rapid and necessary transformation. We live in an era in which knowledge is growing in addressing the world's most urgent problems, when technology promises wonderful possibilities and the health field is growing by leaps and bounds.
Opening class addresses questions about education
New understandings of the aesthetics field, together with advances in technology, have opened the doors to remarkable new possibilities for teaching and learning, both in person and online. How can we best use our time in the classroom? How can we connect people and intellectual resources beyond the classroom to improve what happens during hands-on classes?
“These teaching innovations are not just about technology. Across the campus, schools and professors are expanding opportunities for hands-on, experiential learning. We recently launched a new format of live explanatory classes with practical demonstration of procedures; everything was designed to ensure excellence in the learning of Nepuga/FAPUGA students.”
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
Alfred North Whitehead
That is our task: to preserve the quality that Nepuga/FAPUGA has always delivered over the years, and to evolve to meet the demands of these changing times. We face both an opportunity and an imperative to embrace thoughtful change and to affirm our core values in a way that fulfills the enduring promise of this extraordinary university to its students and to the world. “It is a great privilege to be here with you in this work. Thank you very much.”
NewsSarah
NEPUGA content team — Núcleo de Especializações Ana Carolina Puga.
