ANECA, the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation, and AVANZA Foundation, a private entity specializing in the comprehensive care of the group with High Intellectual Abilities, signed an agreement this past Friday, March 18, that will allow them to begin to provide specific attention to the group of university students with high intellectual abilities.
This is the first Agreement in Spain that focuses on this group.
Thus, starting in the next academic year 2022-2023, AVANZA Foundation will be able to launch the DACIU Program.
DACIU is the acronym for the program for the Development of High Intellectual Abilities at the University. In this first edition, it will have the support of ten universities, selected in response to the avalanche of requests for collaboration.
Mercedes Siles Molina, director of this entity dependent on the Ministry of Universities, has been the main driving force behind this programme on behalf of the Administration, aware that thanks to its development dozens of students will be able to benefit from being part of research projects at the highest level.
The signing of this agreement allows for significant progress in the care of students with High Intellectual Abilities in the university environment, something that until now, according to AVANZA, had not occurred at this level. “Getting dozens of teachers involved through this project will be a milestone that could mark a before and after in the care of these young people,” says Alberto Flaño Romero, President of the Foundation.
After its presentation at the various universities, the initiative has been very well received by them, having exceeded all the expectations of the organizing entities. DACIU will provide one hundred students from ten universities with the opportunity to take part in one hundred research projects in various fields. All participants, both students and teachers, and even the universities themselves, will be subject to a rigorous selection process with the aim of achieving a program of academic excellence that is unique to date in Spain.
In parallel to all of the above, several companies have already shown interest in participating in the project, since one of its phases involves integration into the world of work. In this way, these students will be able to combine their academic participation in research processes with the introduction to their future professional development, something that brings this program closer to that comprehensive attention to the participating students proposed within its objectives.