Josep M. Santos, General Director of La Salle Campus Barcelona
La Salle is a paradigmatic institution in the management of change since our birth more than three hundred years ago. We have demonstrated how to accompany the transformations and development of society during the last three centuries through action and involvement, always evaluating the circumstances of the moment and giving the best response based on our values and deploying our mission. We now find ourselves at an inflection point where responses to many of these challenges demand a certain urgency.
We positively impact society in a comprehensive way, we pursue a more fair and sustainable future, in which education must be the lever that helps activate the changes that the world needs. We train our students so that they are not oblivious to injustices, so that they respond in an entrepreneurial and innovative way to global challenges. At La Salle Campus Barcelona we think about the future of university education so that it has an impact on a comprehensive improvement of society as a whole. In addition to being aware of the need to promote a sustainable and ecological future —and present— we have taken action.
Our commitment is to our students and, through them, to society, and that is why we continue to promote accessible and quality university education for all through our scholarship program, from which practically half of our new degree students and one in three students on campus benefit.
We have surpassed the barrier of 5,800 students and, at the same time, our community becomes larger with more educators and professionals who contribute and make the educational mission of La Salle their own, putting the student at the center. In addition to being more, we are also more diverse and international, one of our great objectives to respond to this global world: we have students of more than 90 different nationalities from different geographies. We train students with skills for a global world and we understand internationality as something that helps us in the search for harmony and understanding in a world in need of peace.
Our growth is numerical, but above all in intellectual wealth and transversality. Our ecosystem has added a new pillar, a fourth center that reinforces our humanistic base and also validates us outside, which joins the School of Engineering, the School of Architecture and the Faculty of Commerce and Digital Economy. The incorporation of the La Salle Faculty of Philosophy consolidates us as a transversal and multifaceted educational environment, with diverse perspectives that complement each other. Deep thinking is today key to accompanying technological and social revolutions. Our four centers are defined from the singularity of their proposal but also from the common framework of the campus. This diversity of training and thought that the centers represent enriches the experience of the student and the educator.
We want to consolidate ourselves as an institution that trains people throughout their entire life cycle, and that is why we inaugurated Executive Education in the Santa Maria de l'Estrella building. We are also very close to launching the Interactive Arts & Science Laboratory (IASlab), a European benchmark in the study of the audiovisual and multisensory industry. It will be a laboratory in which our entire ecosystem will dialogue: research, academia, companies, startups and administrations. The building will be energy sustainable and efficient and will take advantage of natural resources. The development of this project makes us especially proud because it makes us the only private university to benefit twice from European FEDER funds, after they were granted to us by the Internet of Things Institute of Catalonia, our other large unique space.
We have two research groups recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya where seventeen lines of research are articulated. We transfer the knowledge generated by our researchers to society and the business world with mechanisms such as the Corporate Board Council, a business council with more than thirty top-level companies. We have been founding members of the Universitat Ramon Llull since 1991 and have expanded our international reach through the university alliances ENGAGE.EU and Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU), through which we face the challenges of society —such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, climate change and migration— and we reinforce our commitment to excellent research and teaching with a strong social implication rooted in the Catholic tradition.
We congratulate ourselves for the good work, the constant commitment and the vocational enthusiasm with which we serve others. Welcome to La Salle, welcome to our campus in Barcelona, welcome to the Universitat Ramon Llull. I hope that your navigation through this website allows you to discover everything you are looking for. The doors of our campus are always open. Thank you very much for your confidence.
Josep M. Santos,
General Director
La Salle Campus Barcelona
Universitat Ramon Llull