Ashoka
UDD is a private university founded in 1990 by a group of six changemaking entrepreneurs committed to the development of Chile. UDD started its first campus in Concepción, a city where poverty and education were big challenges at the time. Since its founding, UDD sought to educate new kinds of professionals for Chile, entrepreneurial spirits with a unique value proposition for the community and a strong commitment to the public good. Three signature values, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Public Responsibility and Ethics, serve as the backbone of UDD’s educational project, and have remained strong since the university’s founding.
The university is committed to being a leader around these signature values, with all initiatives reporting on how they are advancing them. UDD also allocates resources and has designed its organizational structure around promoting its signature values. For example, the Vice Presidency for Innovation and Development promotes these matters across the institution. The Direction of Public Responsibility was created to promote Social Innovation within UDD, and across Chile and Latin America.
UDD is a different kind of university, embracing start-up logic, a pro-entrepreneurship culture, an obsession for change and innovation, and a clear focus on students. The university is helping to spread these ideas and aims to mobilize the Latin American higher education system.