Founded in 1973, UMinho is nowadays one of the most important and prestigious HEIs in Portugal. It is renowned for the competence of its faculty, for the level of excellence in research, the wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses offered and the remarkable degree of interaction with other institutions and the society in general.
Located in the north of Portugal, UMinho cover a student population of around 20000, 40% of which are master or PhD students. The University has 1200 teaching and research staff and around 800 technical and administrative staff.
The University's organisational structure is flexible and conducive to innovation and interdisciplinary, favouring the exploration of emerging research areas. UMinho education and research projects have gained strong international recognition and are supported by a close interaction with many other research centres worldwide. UMinho is a research university, committed to the valorisation of knowledge and also focused on the socio-economic environment, with many successful partnerships. The Times Higher Education 150 under 50 University Ranking 2016 ranked UMinho on the 101th position worldwide.
UMINHO offers 54 1st cycle and integrated Master’s degrees, around 130 Master courses and over 50 PhD programmes (several international programs involving prestigious institutions such as MIT and CMU, USA). Internationalisation is an institutional priority and UMinho has a long and soundly-based experience in coordinating and participating in several EU programmes.
The School of Engineering of the University of Minho has 13 engineering programs. The Department of Production and Systems is a department of the School of Engineering since its foundation. It is the most ancient program related to Industrial Engineering and Management degree programs in Portugal. It manages a doctoral program and several master programs. It has a strong focus on project-based learning approaches, and on interaction with companies.
UM participates in the Start Off meeting, all PMB meetings and project conferences, contributes to all the discussion and planning and QA procedures.
UM is the leading partner of EXTEND responsible for WP 2 Establishment of EXTEND centres, organization of training for centres staff, consultations for development of EXTEND centres documentation, development and population of on-line platform. UM also participates in WP 1 Preparation including tuning of the monitoring methodology for PC universities and contribution to introduction training seminar. UM participates in WP3 to offer consultations during development of teacher competence descriptors, development of training programs for PhD students and staff, participates in preparation of course book, contributes to piloting with guest lectures in PC universities.
Maria Assunção Flores is an associate professor with qualification at the University of Minho, Portugal. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2008/2009. Her research interests inclcude teacher professionalism and identity, teacher education and professional development, teacher appraisal, and change as well as higher education, namely issues of curriculum development, assessment and training theories. She has published extensively on these topics both nationally and internationally. She is currently the Chair of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) and is the Past-Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Council on Education for Teaching (ICET). She is executive editor of the journal Teachers and Teaching Theory and Practice and co-editor of the European Journal of Teacher Education
Diana Mesquita holds a PhD in Education which focuses on Curriculum Development in Industrial Engineering and Management. Currently, is coordinating the project pipBIRA (Pedagogical Innovation Program at Itabira) aiming at supporting engineering teachers to develop pedagogical competences. Additionally, since 2010 she have been developing several workshops for engineering teachers in Portugal and Brazil. She is member of the organising committee of the “International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education” (PAEE) since 2009 and is member of the working group of “Continuing Engineering Education (CEE) and Lifelong Learning (LLL)” from SEFI (European Society for Engineering Education). Her research interests includes: Staff Development; Curriculum Development and Innovation in Higher Education; University and Business Cooperation; amongst other issues related to Engineering Education. She has more than 50 publications in scientific journals, conferences, and book chapters.