Luis Echavarría Villegas Cultural Center and Library
The Luis Echavarría Villegas Cultural Center and Library is a repository for much of the institution’s academic, cultural, social, and historical wealth, but it also houses books and other material from the region, Colombia, and other countries.
This building, located in the heart of the university, contains study spaces, research cubicles, and specialized reference areas that not only are conductive to reading but also provide an ideal place for permanent research, reflection, and creation.
It also houses a Multi-Media Room containing nearly 7,000 audio-visual items, including concerts and films.
Documentary Heritage Hall
The Documentary Heritage Hall, whose purpose is to preserve patrimonial documents, disseminate them and their content, and facilitate users’ access to them, is located on the fourth floor of the Luis Echavarría Villegas Cultural Center and Library.
This repository of knowledge, memory, and history, founded in April 2002, houses material from various collections, including El Carnero bookstore; the personal libraries of Pilar Moreno de Ángel, Joaquín Vallejo Arbeláez, Fabio Botero Gómez, and Luz Posada de Greiff; and the collections of the Antioquian Foundation for Social Studies (Faes), as well as other material donated by different individuals and institutions.
The hall stores a total of 67,411 books, 9,483 pamphlets, 3,500 periodical and magazine titles, 150 private historical and musical archives, 4,900 musical scores, 2,300 maps and plans, and 500 loose pages. It also is home to La Hoja newspaper’s photographic archive and a small collection of photographs.
Users of this university repository can consult the Digital Documentary Heritage Library, where complete texts of books, pamphlets, and historical archives can be freely accessed.
In 2012, the Unesco Memory of the World program’s Regional Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean approved the inclusion of Mariano Ospina Luis Echavarría Villegas Cultural Center and Library 40 Rodríguez’s archive in the Documentary Heritage Hall, which arrived as part of the Faes collection. The documents of this Colombian former president, who governed from 1857 to 1861, consist of 6,583 pages and date from between 1832 and 1912.
Classroom Innovation
On the occasion of EAFIT’s 50th anniversary, which was celebrated in 2010, the institution launched its Project 50 initiative, which trains professors and student assistants in how to apply Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to create innovative learning spaces.
Project 50 comprises three strategies: development of competencies for educational innovation, curriculum management and design innovation, and learning-focused technological development.
Distance Learning
EAFIT Virtual was created to support the process of moving courses online and expanding the university’s educational offering via Internet.
The initiative supports the development of online courses, subjects, and graduate degree programs, and organizes events aimed at creating awareness among the university community about distance learning’s importance.
The institution currently offers four online graduate certificate programs: Human Development Management, SME Management, Organizational Control, and Municipal Public Management.
Technological Infrastructure
EAFIT has a technological platform in place to support its learning processes. This is the product of the institution’s ongoing commitment to being a technology pioneer and leader.
As a result, all of the university’s classrooms (nearly 140) are equipped with technological resources, and all public areas of the Medellín campus, as well as those of EAFIT Bogotá, EAFIT Llanogrande, and EAFIT Pereira, have Internet coverage.
The university’s technological infrastructure includes some 4,300 computers, 60 servers, 48 computer rooms, 100 laptops available for loan, 550 megabytes per second (mbps) of bandwidth, 9 TelePresence roundtables, 2 mobile classrooms, 10 intelligent whiteboards, and 11 more Mimius whiteboards.
Research Spaces
Research in metrology, materials, machines and tools, hydraulics, optics, applied physics, and seismology, among other fields, is conducted at the Laboratory Center, which comprises a total of 47 spaces - including 12 graduate laboratories – that are divided into 7 blocks.
Approximately 10,000 square meters of research space at EAFIT are at the service of its users. The spaces are mainly situated in the Engineering Building. The university also is home to the Argos Center for Innovation and the Apolo Supercomputer Center (in partnership with Purdue University).
Block 26 also houses spaces that support the learning processes of the undergraduate degree programs in Psychology and Marketing, such as the Gesell Chamber and the Affective, Geo-Marketing, Creative Innovation, Neuropsychology, and Visual laboratories.
Other degree programs also have special areas that support students’ academic training. Such is the case of the MediaLab, a project developed for use by Communications Studies students that provides a space for learning, research, and the exchange of knowledge about digital culture and online media.
Other Learning Spaces
Financial Laboratory
This laboratory on the first floor of Block 17 is a Colombian Stock Exchange location and a space for learning about the market and its fluctuations. This area allows students to observe and analyze the phenomena that have a daily impact on the economy and financial markets.
Its purpose is to bring knowledge about finance and its practice and an understanding of Colombia’s capital markets to a broader audience. Therefore, in addition to benefiting the EAFIT community, the Financial Laboratory develops activities and courses aimed at children, adolescents, and adults to bring this subject within the reach of ordinary citizens.
Envivo Network
Envivo, an online TV channel, airs EAFIT’s main activities live or tape delayed and provides instructional assistance to professors seeking to make their classes more interactive. The network offers a programming schedule.
Acustica Radio Station
This is the sound production laboratory of the School of Humanities’ undergraduate program in Communications Studies. It is a Web-based network that serves as a learning lab for students and an academic and cultural media outlet that disseminates material created by them and other members of the EAFIT community.