56 Ordinary Graduation
Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC)

Rector's words
Dr. Rolando M. Guzmán

Mrs. President of the Board of Regents, Mrs. Mary Fernández Mr. President Hipólito Mejia
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board of Regents and the Academic Council
Executives, teachers and collaborators of INTEC
Guest Speaker, Dr. Mayte Vásquez
Graduates and Graduates
Ladies and Gentlemen

With this act of graduation, we give a symbolic closure to a cycle of special relevance in the life of any student. This ceremony represents the culmination of one stage of life and the beginning of another and I am moved to think, graduates and graduates, that my condition as Rector allows me to give testimony before society of the dedication that each of you has shown throughout the weather. Let me congratulate you on the responsibility with which you took on the challenge of developing as professionals, and extend my congratulations to all the people who have provided support throughout the entire journey: mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, wives and husbands, daughters and sons, among many others.

Now is the time to face new challenges and I have no doubt that each graduate has the necessary tools to move forward. In fact, it is enough to continue doing what you have done so far: that is, set a goal, work hard, and maintain a dose of enthusiasm in the face of adversity. But in addition to individual development, this moment invites us to ask ourselves the role of each graduate before society, which currently faces unprecedented situations in technological, environmental, political and social change.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the coming decades, humanity will have to travel one of two paths. A first path leads to a world full of possibilities, where scientific development manages to overcome many diseases, technological advance allows companies to increase productivity and the strengthening of democracy leads to an ever greater exercise of individual freedoms. However, the second path leads to a dark world, where environmental deterioration would intensify the struggle for survival, where migration would no longer be seen as an opportunity and would start to generate tensions that foster hatred between peoples, and where economic inequalities they would lead to violent conflicts.

I have an obligation to remind you, male and female graduates, that the preeminence of a world or other outcome depends largely on you. That is why the training received at the university implies a moral commitment to society. As alumni of the hive, each one must ask themselves how to contribute to the construction of a better world and how to use their talents to leave a lasting mark.

This challenge of human responsibility is also pertinent to INTEC, whose essential purpose is to contribute to improving the living conditions of Dominicans. This mission translates into the permanent intention of being an academic instrument at the service of governments, the productive sectors and social organizations. In this sense, this being the last time we are all together, let me share with you a brief sample of the efforts of our institution to contribute its grain of sand for the benefit of society.

In the field of health and social security, INTEC is currently supporting the Ministry of Public Health by coordinating the design of a new Ten-Year Health Plan that will guide the country's actions in this sector until 2028. In the field of transport, INTEC is working with INTRANT and with several private companies to develop an intervention project in the transit system, with a view to saving many of the lives that are lost today due to the deplorable conditions in which this activity takes place . On the environmental side, the university has just started the country's first doctorate in Environmental Management, while continuing several pioneering research on climate change.

In terms of education, we have five education-oriented science training programs in place to help train a new generation of teachers for Dominican schools. And finally, in the business sector, our faculty continues to provide advice to dozens of companies of different sizes and sectors, to help them develop productive capacities and competitiveness. As you can see, our radius of action is very wide and growing, since we have adopted the principle that the smallness of our geography should not limit the greatness of our aspirations.

We are also convinced that INTEC is an institution with a vocation for transcendence, and we are working so that in the not too distant future we stop being a regional benchmark for academic quality, to be recognized as a global benchmark. In this task, graduates and graduates, we need you. We hope that as graduates, you continue to feel part of the alma mater, that you stay informed of our work, that you contribute to the extent of your possibilities to the growth of a university that will continue to be yours, and above all, that through your professional careers and human beings become a faithful sample of the intetian spirit.

In closing, let me now introduce our guest speaker. Mayte Vásquez was born in the Dominican Republic and has a PhD in Physics, graduated from the Technical University of Berlin. His doctoral work was carried out at the German Aerospace Center in Munich, working on the preparation of codes for the calculation of radioactive transport on extrasolar planets. He also has a bachelor's degree in Astrophysics from the Florida Technological Institute, and a master's degree at the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands, Spain, in which he concentrated on astrophysical instrumentation, and worked with a sensor that currently operates in the world's largest optical telescope.

During his professional practice, he felt the need to share his progress not only with the specialized community but also with the rest of society, and that is why he became involved in the dissemination of science. Through various initiatives, Dr. Vásquez has taken astrophysics to schools and community centers in different countries of the world and has been invited as a speaker to the Forum on Space Issues at the United Nations, held in 2015 in Vienna. In recent years, she has been dedicated to observing and monitoring the Earth's atmosphere, with a focus on climate change. In short, Mayte Vasquez is an example of the use of science with a social conscience.

Let's receive it with a loud applause.