The 2019 CIDUI Symposium took place on the 16^th of May on the Poblenou campus of the Pompeu Fabra University. This edition centred on the interaction that exists between the university and its social environment in order to reflect on the wide range of training programmes offered by the university to support the needs of the students, as well as the employability and competitiveness of its graduates.

The symposium also analysed whether or not the universities, together with the businesses and institutions in their surrounding environment, create opportunities to promote the talent of the students, to establish them within their own community and to encourage them to return there. In this way, the link between the university and its surrounding area is strengthened through social and transformative proposals.

The following people were all invited to participate in the discussion of these different topics; Faraón Llorens, the director of the Cátedra Santander-UA of Digital Transformation and Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Alicante; Lluís Pastor, the director of the Open University of Catalonia’s E-Learn Centre; M. Carme Verdaguer, the director of the Bosch and Gimpera Foundation; Ferran Badia, the vice-rector of planning, innovation and business at the University of Lleida; Ismael Peña-López, the director general of citizen participation from the Government of Catalonia and Mònica Figueras, the vice-rector of Social Responsibility and Equality projects from Pompeu Fabra University.

Through the symposium, experiences were identified which demonstrate the commitment of the university to its social environment and which propose a series of challenges so that this relationship can be authentic and effective.

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