Academy - Monday, May 8, 2023

150 years of the Faculty of Civil Engineering: Unicauca formally began this celebration that will last for the rest of the year

With the event "The 1983 earthquake in Popayán: Stories and lessons learned 40 years later", which took place on May 5, 2023 in the facilities of the Paraninfo Francisco José de Caldas, the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the University of Cauca together With the Colombian Geological Service and the Popayán Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, we began the celebration of the 150 years of this historic Faculty. In addition to the technical conferences, a photographic exhibition was inaugurated that delighted locals and visitors.

With the event "The 1983 earthquake in Popayán: Stories and lessons learned 40 years later", which took place on May 5, 2023 in the facilities of the Paraninfo Francisco José de Caldas, the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the University of Cauca together With the Colombian Geological Service and the Popayán Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, we began the celebration of the 150 years of this historic Faculty. In addition to the technical conferences, a photographic exhibition was inaugurated that delighted locals and visitors.

Within the framework of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the creation of the Chair of Civil Engineering at the University of Cauca and taking into account the fundamental role played by the Alma Mater from Cauca in the reconstruction of the White City of Colombia, the Faculty of Civil Engineering, together with the Colombian Geological Service and the Popayán Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, carried out a great technical conference on the lessons learned from the experience of rebuilding the city.

During this special meeting, the way in which this fact allowed, from the University of Cauca, to make an academy around Civil Engineering was highlighted, leaving great references for the nation, such as the Colombian Code of Earthquake-Resistant Constructions issued by Decree- Law 1400 of 1984 establishing itself as a first attempt to standardize the design and construction of structures in our country, which was in force for 14 years, then the Congress of the Republic through Law 400 of 1997, issued the Earthquake-Resistant Construction Regulations of the 1998 NSR-98 standard, which replaced the 1984 Code, and was finally updated in 2010 as the NSR-10 Regulation.

In addition, the interventions by the invited experts made it possible to raise awareness about the role we have as a society in a department like Cauca and in a city like Popayán, which is located a few kilometers from the Puracé Volcano, because as he said in Geologist Julio Fierro Morales of the Coñombiano Geological Service in his presentation "Peace is built with respect for the territory, with the understanding of the territory."

Thus, on behalf of our Alma Mater, the Engineer Hugo Cosme, through a great presentation, portrayed from his own experience, how the work of the university was in this historical event, a presentation that was very well accompanied thanks to the photographic exhibition , which illustrated the attendees, many of them students from various educational institutions in the city, who are too young to be related to this historical event that marked a before and after for the capital of Cauca and, of course, for the university .

In this way, we begin the commemoration of the 150 years of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, a faculty that laid the foundations so that today the University of Cauca is a High Quality Higher Education Institution with the greatest incidence in southwestern Colombia.