National University Extension Policy: analysis of the experience of the Institute of Health Sciences of UFPA

Abstract

The current study purpose refers to the university extension, addressing the concepts of university, organization, knowledge andextension. We sought to answer the following question: Does the outcome that has been generated through projects on extension practices developed by ICS/UFPA actually fulfill the guidelines of the National University Extension Policy? The pursued objective consisted in a general analysisof the extension practices of the Institute of Health Sciences (ICS) at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) in the light of the National University Extension Policy (NUEP), comprehending dialogical interaction, interdisciplinary and interprofessionalism, teaching-research-extension inseparability, impact on student training, and impact and social transformation envisaged within the Policy Extension of UFPA. The research methodology comprehended a quantitative and qualitative approach supported by bibliographic and documentary supply. It was consulted the collection of various documents, given more evidence to those focused on the university extension in 2012, contained into several instances of UFPA. A number of 80 projects and 60 reports of extension of ICS were selected for analysis in the year 2012. The results revealed that the guidelines of PNEU fell far short of being reached by the ICS products, when it came to interdisciplinarity and interprofessionalism, teaching-research-extension inseparability, and impact and social transformation. Furthermore, there was little participation by teachers, students and administrative technicians of ICS in such activity. It was concluded that the extension model of ICS consists is a welfare model, developed through service provision.

Keywords

• Política Nacional de Extensão Universitária
• Extensão na UFPA
• Bolsas de Extensão
• Instituto de Ciências da Saúde