CLC-Conference-Proceeding-2018

environmental values in students, has included
participation in hundreds of community projects
in its latest courses. A large part of these projects
was done jointly with provincial and national
organizations and institutions. They recognize
the positive impact the universities have on
community work. They work successfully on
increasing the efficiency when executing each
project.
Overall, the Ministry of Higher Education
has won a considerable percentage of the total
awards granted by the Cuban Academy of
Sciences in the last few years, and the percentage
of those related to Projects that work on aspects
more commonly related to natural and human
environmental dimensions have slowly been
increasing.
Starting in 2000, this Ministry established
an award for “Applied result that has most
contributed to the protection and improvement of
the environment.” However, despite the
achievements mentioned, there are still a series
of problems that are common to almost all
institutions of the Ministry of Higher Education.
Some of the main problems are the following:
1. Limits to the creation of an environmental
culture with a comprehensive focus on
students, professors, and workers in general.
2. Insufficient mastery of environment-related
topics by senior staff.
3. Limited influence in environmental
management training of people in
communities located in areas of influence of
higher education institutions.
4. Unsuitable conditions of the physical
environment at many higher education
institutions.
The challenge then for Cuban higher
education is how to design an educational
strategy that allows professionals to be trained
with a solid environmental culture that makes it
possible to understand environmental problems
in a more general and holistic way.
At the same time, the strategy must allow,
organically and comprehensively, for the
community, the governments, administrations
and the business sector to interact in order to
transfer this culture to all sectors of society and
get closer to a reality of sustainable
development. (2) This way, we would have a
comprehensive system in order to carry out this
training process.
DEVELOPMENT
In the case of the Universidad de La Habana
[University of Havana], expressing the political
will of creating an environmental philosophy and
culture in students, professors, and workers with
a focus on a comprehensive system that
transcends the framework of university activity
and also contributes to the sustainability of social
and economic development was the creation and
restructuring of the Centro de Estudios de Medio
Ambiente [Environmental Research Center]
(CEMA).
The CEMA’s mission was to “Be a place for
reflection, exchange, collaboration, and
interdisciplinary debate on environmental issues
that encourage the development of an
environmental culture in and outside the
university, playing a protagonist role in
coordinating and promoting actions in the fields
of environmental education and scientific
research.” Its main characteristics were its
interdisciplinary nature, voluntary participation,
inter-center collaboration, compromise, and
flexibility.
It was made up of a small group of
individuals (6) who perform administrative and
organizational duties and a panel of directors