The UPF Barcelona School of Management gives recognition to its teachers on Faculty Acknowledgement Day

The UPF Barcelona School of Management upholds its firm commitment to academic excellence and the quality of the education it offers on its Masters and Postgraduate programs. With this in mind, one of the most important highlights of the academic calendar is Faculty Acknowledgement Day, which gives recognition to the efforts and hard work of all the faculty members at the UPF-BSM.

In this year’s edition, the award for the Faculty Member of the Year has gone to Javier Gómez Biscarri, the Director of the School’s Master of Science programs. “In my opinion, the Masters of Science really encapsulate what we expect from the UPF-BSM”, explained Gómez Biscarri, adding that “we must always keep looking upward and comparing ourselves with the best universities in Europe and around the world. That is the key to continuing progressing. Gómez Biscarri emphasized his passion for the programs that he heads, underlining that achieving academic excellence takes more than just what happens in the classroom. “We are helping students to grow in all aspects of their lives. That is why all the activity outside the classroom is so important. Ultimately, at UPF-BSM, they should find a place in which they are proud to participate”.

The event was attended by the Dean of UPF-BSM, Llorenç Bagur and the Director General of the UPF-BSM, José Manuel Martínez-Sierra. “These awards are very well deserved. This special occasion gives some well-earned recognition to professionals whose achievements have not just been good, they have been outstanding”, emphasized the Dean. Meanwhile, Martínez-Sierra added that “Without a doubt, the academic team is the driving force that enables our School to grow and improve day after day, within a framework of values that I wholeheartedly embrace: responsibility and leadership. With this in mind, let’s celebrate the academic recognition of our faculty, which is and will continue to be the foundation and source of inspiration for future generation”.

Six Academic Awards

Six categories are evaluated at the event, with  the UPF-BSM’s Vice Dean of Social Impact and Academic Innovation, Ana Freire, receiving the Teaching Innovation Award for her successful, cross-cutting introduction of aspects such as Artificial Intelligence and Programming into qualification programs in areas other than technology. This award is given in recognition of innovative educational initiatives that contribute towards improving teaching quality.

The Teaching Excellence Award, which gives the students the chance to name the best lecturer in the field of teaching, was presented to Toni Aira, the Director of the Master in Political and Institutional Communication and Director of the UPF-BSM’s Agbar Chair. At the end of their programs, students complete a questionnaire to rate their lecturers. This is an extremely useful tool for ensuring the continuous improvement of our teaching standards.

Andrei Boar, the Academic Coordinator of the Custom Programs in the UPF-BSM’s Financial Department, received the Knowledge Transfer Award for the set of activities designed to disseminate the studies and contents, experiences and methodologies used to ensure that knowledge reaches all parts both within and outside the UPF-BSM. In this case, Boar was presented the award in recognition of the activities he has carried out within the framework of  knowledge transfer.

With respect to research, the Social Research Award was presented to the “Mapping enablers for SDG implementation in the private sector: a systematic literature review and research agenda”, a publication that forms part of the doctoral thesis of Erola Palau, the Associate Director of the UPF-BSM’s Master of Science in Sustainability Management, which,  incidentally, is being directed by her co-authors, Josep Llach and Llorenç Bagur. 

Lastly, the Impact Publication Award, given in recognition of research rated as excellent in the previous academic year, was presented to Jordi Pereira, the Academic Director of the Postgraduate Program in Data Management at the UPF-BSM. The prize-winning article was published in the ABS 4 star-rated European Journal of Operational Research, with the title “Exact and heuristic methods for a workload allocation problem with chain precedence constraints”.

The UPF-BSM takes the opportunity of Faculty Acknowledgement Day to highlight its commitment to educational innovation, cutting-edge research and the professional development of the entire faculty. By rewarding our lecturers’ efforts, the UPF-BSM reaffirms its goal of improving educational quality and progressing towards its objective to training leaders equipped to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow.