Mondragon Unibertsitatea

Mission Statement

Mondragón Unibertsitatea is a cooperative university of social enterprise and sense, the major activities of which are training, research and rendering of services to companies, educational centres and other public or private organisations. It is defined as a university having its origins in the Basque Country and with a global spirit. Starting from its culture and integration in the Basque society, it will be open to the most advanced universal thoughts as well as the cooperation and exchange with other centres, people and bodies all over the world. Its fundamental mission is to achieve a quality integral training by means of an active student participation in their educational process, which will allow them to face with guaranteed success the challenges put forward by the current transformation of the business world and social environment in general. This integral training will incorporate, the necessary know-how, as well as the capacities and competence based on the work ethics, solidarity, self-managing attitude (proactive) of its own destiny, searching for a balance between the personal and community development and, as a general rule, the values derived from the cooperative thought. Mondragón Unibertsitatea is aiming at having an innovative teaching staff involved in the training process of students leading to the transformation of the society by means of a quality teaching system on the basis of active student-teacher cooperation. Mondragón Unibertsitatea will become outstanding because of its efficiency in management of either its organisation or human and material resources, so as to meet the requirements of its students, workers and collaborators. Mondragón Unibertsitatea will promote the cooperation/ relationship with other organisations engaged in training, research, application and dissemination of the know-how or business management. In addition, this institution assumes a commitment to the transformation of the society by contributing to its human, technological and economic progress, essentially through Basque companies.

International Role

Considering international activity, relations with prestigious foreign universities come from long time ago, from the seventies, thanks to our international student mobility program. Since then more than 700 students have had the opportunity to follow studies in foreign countries in Europe and America, mainly. Among them, Politecnico di Milano, Politecnico di Torino, Ensam de Paris, Politecnico de Montreal, Ecole Centrale Nantes, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Delft Technical University, École De design Nantes- Atlantique, Essen Duisburg, etc. Besides, we promote European student and teaching mobility on grounds of Erasmus and Leonardo programs. Participating and organizing successfully of international design awards. In the field of research, European projects have been developed.

National Role

The use of design is fostered within different local institutions such as the Basque Government, the Administrative Authority of the Gipuzkoa, Mondragon Town Hall, local design studios and National Universities: ELISAVA in Barcelona, University of Valencia, University of Jaime I in Castellon, University of Girona, University of A Coruña..etc. Besides, Cooperation is a fact with more than 250 companies involved in several sectors (household appliances, elevators, hand-tools, didactic equipment, packaging and package, graphic design….) but also with some clusters as it is the case of the automotive cluster from the Basque Country.

Main Focus

Nowadays we have implemented the “Mendeberri 2025 education project”. This training methodology works with PBL or Problem-project based learning. Its main purpose is to develop a curriculum and teaching-learning process reengineering to allow to: • Prepare graduates incorporating competencies (transversals) and values (teamworking, leadership..etc) demanded by the society in the 21st Century, and highly professionals in their specific technical domain. • Exploit the opportunities offered by the Information Society to improve the teaching-learning processes. It implies a Redesign of the teaching-learning process: • Focussed on the student, where the lecturer acts as tutor, advisor, guide, co-learner… • Focussed on the construction of knowledge by the student • Competences and values developed in an intentional way. Its development is evaluated. • Variety of didactic processes (based on events, based on projects, by resolution of problems, discussion) • The process and the product are evaluated and the lecturers and the students take part in the evaluation.