Professor José Olmedo Ortega Hurtado has been selected for the second time to be part of SINAES, an institution to which the Costa Rican State has granted the authority to certify the quality of higher education institutions, careers, and programs.

The National System of Accreditation of Higher Education (SINAES) in the Republic of Costa Rica has once again selected Professor José Olmedo Ortega Hurtado, current Head of the Department of Linguistics and Coordinator of the Master's in Higher Education at the University of Cauca, as an International Academic Peer to attend processes related to the accreditation of academic programs at universities in this Central American country.

SINAES is the body to which the Costa Rican State has granted the authority to certify the quality of institutions, careers, and programs of higher education that voluntarily undergo its rigorous evaluation process and demonstrate compliance with established quality criteria. External evaluation is one of the stages of the official accreditation process. This stage occurs after self-assessment and involves the assessment of the quality of the career undertaken by a team of external academic peers, both national and international, with academic backgrounds in the discipline corresponding to the program being evaluated, who have no affiliation with the institution to which the academic program belongs.

It is noteworthy that Professor Ortega Hurtado, due to his expertise in evaluating the quality of higher education, is constantly sought after by Colombia's National Council for Accreditation (CNA) for external evaluations for the accreditation of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral academic programs at various universities in the country.

Consequently, he currently serves, for the fourth consecutive year, on the Education Evaluation Board of CONACES, an entity within the Subdirectorate for Quality Assurance in Higher Education of the Ministry of National Education. Among other functions, this entity handles the granting and renewal of qualified registration for higher education academic programs, as well as the validation of foreign-acquired degrees.

Professor José Olmedo Ortega Hurtado holds a Ph.D. in Education, specializing in Language and Education, and a Postdoctoral degree in Internationalization and Accreditation of Higher Education, with extensive teaching, administrative, and research experience. He is the director of the Kon-sentido research group, categorized by Minciencias Colombia, which specifically focuses on a research line in Quality Assurance in Higher Education. He has also served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences on several occasions, a member of the Institutional Accreditation Committee, and currently holds positions as Head of the Department of Linguistics and Coordinator of the Master's in Higher Education.

We congratulate Professor José Olmedo Ortega Hurtado on his significant achievements, high professional level, and leadership in his field, which enhance the image and prestige of our Alma Mater at a national and international level. We wish him every success in fulfilling these roles, contributing to the constant pursuit of academic excellence and consolidating the policy of ensuring the quality of higher education.

Related Note:

Professor from Unicauca was chosen as an International Evaluator for SINAES (https://www.unicauca.edu.co/versionP/noticias/universidad/docente-de-uni...)