Extensão universitária e desenvolvimento regional endógeno: o papel da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná na pandemia

Abstract

The university’s transformative potential lies above all in building instruments to ensure human rights, especially at a time of health crisis. In this context, university extension activities, which reach out to the surrounding communities, guarantee the extension of these rights to a public that is beyond the walls of the university institution. In Brazil, between 2016 and 2020, university institutions, especially public ones, were the target of widespread questioning, driven by ideological discourses based on economic liberalism. And with the Covid-19 pandemic, public universities have been able to demonstrate their important social extensionist role in line with their intrinsic characteristics. Brazilian universities play a strategic role in training professionals and researchers, in addition to scientific and technological progress, which consequently contributes to the country’s economic development. However, these results are mostly perceived by those directly involved, such as the academic community, or through specific partnerships. And university extension, which is an important tool for integrating teaching and research, fostering a transformative relationship between university and society, is still interpreted in a polysemic way, especially by the academic community, which perceives it in a reductionist way as a welfare action. Given this context and considering the importance of universities for the development of society, this research seeks to investigate the relationship between university extension and endogenous regional development in times of crisis. The problem is how can university extension contribute to endogenous regional development at a time of health crisis? Starting from the premise that university extension is an instrument for endogenous development, the research adopts a qualitative approach, of an applied nature, by means of a bibliographical review and documentary analysis. The study seeks to explore a topic that still lacks conceptual consensus in the interpretation of the internal university community, especially with regard to the university as a place for innovative and entrepreneurial activities, based on the case of a technological university during the Covid-19 pandemic. The main results show that, with the endogenization of local resources, UTFPR’s extension role contributed to the community’s self-protection during the public health crisis. The university’s extension actions provided rapid responses adapted to local demands, using the resources to produce personal protective equipment, safety and hygiene items, as well as processing data and information to support local government decision-making, in partnership with local actors. The links between the players and the stock of academic knowledge have made it possible to meet local demand. However, there was less student participation in most of these actions, although their presence is a fundamental aspect of university extension.