For personal reasons, Ana Lúcia Gazzola has requested a leave of absence from her post as Director of IESALC.

This announcement takes place soon after adjournment of the Regional Conference on Higher Education in Cartagena de Indias (CRES 2008) in June of this year. CRES was the first of four such world events, which are preparatory meetings for the World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE 2009) to be held in Paris in June of next year.

One need merely list the events, and any reader linked to higher education will immediately understand their strategic importance. At CRES, where there were more than 3,000 participants, discussions took place on the challenges faced by the LAC region in higher education in the coming years. At the WCHE, those active in higher education will make decisions that will affect the future of hundreds of millions of young people who will enter higher education in the coming decades.

This said, it should be noted that Ana Lúcia, from her position as Director of IESALC, was undoubtedly the major actor in the great effort involved in convoking and organizing CRES in our region, an event that represents one of the principal factors of the unification of wills at last year's UNESCO bi-annual conference, at which the holding of the WCHE in 2009 was decided.

From the point of view of the presidency of the Administrative Council of IESALC, to which we were elected for the period September 2006 until the CRES conference, we were privileged witnesses to Ana Lucia's personal effort, broad intelligence, and conviction to, in a brief two-year period, carry out radical and very positive changes in the performance of the institute. These changes were expressed in all aspects of its management: in the academic quality of those who actively cooperate with IESALC, in the response of governments of the region to its initiatives, as a greater expression of such management, the substantive success of CRES in the invitation to the WCHE of 2009.

All of this is profoundly linked to the outstanding performance of Ana Lúcia during the period that she directed the institute, and that today she has very rightly passed on to Dr. Renato Carvalho, who has demonstrated in the responsibilities that he has assumed, his capacity to carry them forward.

The LAC region, the first to have convoked a preparatory meeting for the WCHE, will be present in Paris in July of next year, with its proposals and principles, and we all hope that the motives that led Dr. Gazolla to request a leave will have a positive effect, and that Ana Lúcia will be present and active in the WCHE of 2009.


By Dr. Ing. Rafael Guarga
General Secretary of the Montevideo Group of Universities
Former President of the Administrative Council of IESALC