The Exchange Unit is an academic and administrative unit
that depends on the Cultural Department of the ICDA. It
is in charge or coordinating and carrying out academic
and cultural programs that are the result of agreements
with national and foreign institutions and universities.
This unit was created as an umbrella program that would
come into being by carrying out several related yet independent
projects, which would cover the different types of activities:
Academic, cultural, informative, community, sports, interinstitutional,
etc.
Our
History
1.
Since its foundation in 1947, the ICDA has been a leading
institution in offering high-quality educational services
to Dominican society; we have traditionally dominated
the market in the teaching of English. However, we are
now venturing into other branches of education: The basic
formation of children and teenagers; teaching high school
students technical and administrative skills; forming
professionals at the graduate and post graduate level
at the Universidad Dominico-Americana. In its workings,
it has always managed to guarantee high standards of excellence
and innovation in the services rendered. It has also been
an important pillar for the expansion of national culture
and of its international projection.
2.a
The changes that have come about in these last few years,
which can be put into the expression of three concepts:
Globalization of exchange and free trade, Internet, the
digital lifestyle, have made us put in execution new projects,
in accordance with the new times.
2.b
Likewise, the Dominico is aware that it must take advantage
of the comparative advantages the Dominican Republic enjoys
in the sub region of the Caribbean and Central America:
Privileged access to the international markets thanks
to its geographical location; availability of the most
advanced technological resources in low-cost communications;
the opportunities it receives as a member of several free
trade organizations, and ongoing the institutional reforms,
to keep on developing, creatively, the seat of honor it
has reached, as well as the institutional growth through
the implementation of new projects to be executed with
the same excellence with which it has shown up until now. Our
“Raison d’être” Considering
the facts, under the present conditions, the most appropriate
credentials for setting up an institution exchange program
is to present Dominican society with the image of what
the ICDA has come to be: To show its reality of intense
dynamism, institutional richness and diversity, marked
growth, Its real position in society and on the market,
underscoring, by the way, the ample and varied institutional
experience it has attained in the more than fifty years
of services, and of the personnel that works in it. With
such a record, the Dominico finds itself uniquely able
to undertake successfully a new, all-encompassing and
coherent program of institutional exchanges that will
reinforce and at the same time consolidate the programs
of this type that have already been started. Through a
program like this, we would hope to, asides from growing
as an institution, offer the best of our experience as
educators and present to the world the diversity and abundance
of nuances present in the cultural expression of Dominicans,
in accordance with the new times and the possibilities
that stem from them.
Objectives
To confirm itself in the accomplishment of its mission.
To
reinforce its presence in society.
To
project the values, customs, desires our culture,
and the best of our society.
To
enrich ourselves as an institution and as a group
of people with new values, experience, and methods
to accomplish with excellence our mission.
Specific
objectives:
To consolidate the image of the institution by concentrating
all the pertinent internal information in the Web
page if the Institution through a new design and by
relaunching our website.
To
design a program to train users on the adequate
use of the ICDA as an administrative gateway.
To
create, a little at a time, a system of E-commerce
to offer the following
Products and services: Registration, ICDA
products, the sale of books, CD-ROM’s,
educational CDs, E-books, gifts, souvenirs,
etc. through the use of the ICDA Web.
To
contribute to the development of pilot programs
for independent study courses through the
creation of online courses and level exams,
using the administrative gateway.
To
redesign and consolidate the current programs
for academic and cultural exchanges.
To
identify, elaborate, and carry out possible
projects of institutional collaboration that
will involve public and private institutions
based on common interests or the exchange
of services or products.
To
incorporate into the cultural domain new publics
and participants in the Dominico’s cultural
programs.
To
be conductive to the creation of an exchange
programs for Dominican artists and their counterparts
in the United States and in the Caribbean.
To
elaborate packages of courses and programs
to reinforce the management of culture in
the Dominican Republic through agreements
negotiated with the Secretaría de Cultura
and with private cultural institutions and
with non-profit organizations.
To
identify objectives in common, in order to
establish programs of mutual interest that
can be financed or carried out through the
exchange of products and services with other
public and private institutions.
To
broaden the participation of the community
within the scope of the cultural programs
of the ICDA through the creation of more activities,
courses, and programs within the cultural
package, such as: The creation of nuclei of
children’s orchestras and young people’s
orchestras, video clubs and movie clubs, the
design of the Web and the creation of personal
pages on the Internet, literary workshops,
in Spanish as well as in English.
To
reinforce the cultural presence of the English
tongue in the cultural program of the Dominico,
in order to attract to our cultural program
a greater number of Americans, Canadians,
and British residents in the country, as well
as the Dominicans who would be interested
in cultural presentations in English or related
to the ICDA, be it as students and teachers,
theater, readings, conferences, text analysis,
etc.
Strategies
or action policies
We avail ourselves of the most advanced
communication technology at present: The Internet and
its derivatives: E-mail, Newsletters, online instruction,
E-commerce, E-books, CD-ROM’s, to bring together
and outline from one place the management of all the institutional
information in order to offer a coherent and consolidated
image of our mission, values, and programs, in order to
make our social projection stronger and clearer. Besides,
the Web page works as an administrative instrument (gateway),
from where, little by little, will come a new virtual
dimension of the ICDA. From there, we will offer all the
services that new require physical presence, which will
have the operative advantage of being open 24 hours a
week all year round and available the world over, all
of which will have an extremely low management cost.
Execution
and supervision
The
executive unit that has been foreseen in the program is
the position of Exchange Supervisor. An organization chart
has been set up for its management and its relationship
with other units that depend from the same superiors.
According to said organization chart, the Exchange Supervisor
depends, from an administrative point of view, from the
Cultural Department, and is linked to the Academic Department
for all things executive. Its duration is undetermined.
Mechanisms of coordination are formed specifically for
the carrying out of the specific programs and other activities:
Round Tables on Exchange Coordination, which will be in
charge or providing the recourses and following up all
that is necessary to set up, carry out, and evaluate each
of the exchange programs. These are made up of: The General
Academic Director, the Head of the Cultural Department,
and the Exchange Coordinator, as well as the directors
or representatives of each of the departments involved
in organizing and carrying out the project. Before carrying
out each of these programs, a budget, a calendar, and
the mechanisms of supervision and final evaluation must
be set up and approved.
