New training offer, as well as renewed study plans and faculty in most courses offered. ISMAT – Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes de Portimão is on a tide of renewal and innovation, starting the 2019/20 school year with many new features.
O Sul Informação spoke with Célia Gonçalves Pires, administrator of ISMAT, who explained the work she has been developing in this higher education institution, since she became ahead of the institute's destinies.
One of the tasks was the adequacy of the training offer. «This year, we are offering another course, the degree in Tourism Management, which is an area that we, in the Algarve, must cover», he revealed.
«This is a strategic path for us at various levels and it is very important that we have seen this degree approved by the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES)», added Célia Gonçalves Pires.
This course has a particularity: the fact that its students start “doing an internship from the 2nd year onwards, which will necessarily be different from the internship they will do in the 3rd year”.
The idea is to ensure that students go through companies of different natures within the tourism sector.
“It is also expected that any graduate of this course, when finished, will have guaranteed employability. We, at this moment, have partnerships and protocols with all the hotel units in the Algarve, with the different associations in the sector and, therefore, we have the conditions created for this», believes the ISMAT administrator.
Also with regard to the training offer, the higher education institution of Portimão will submit, this month, "a master's degree in Law, another in Management in the Development of Human Resources and another in the scope of Information Systems".
«For 2020/21, we intend to present a doctorate, to move the institution, which at the moment is university in nature, up the ladder in the legal system», announced Célia Gonçalves Pires.
Also new is the launch of non-degree training, namely “from a school for executives”, which will operate in ISMAT's facilities on Avenida Miguel Bombarda, which have undergone renovation works.
In this space, in addition to this new offer, there will be a business incubator, which will be jointly run by ISMAT and Startup Portimão.
Moreover, the university institute from Portimo maintains the offer that previously existed in the areas of Law, Management, Computer Engineering, Design and Architecture, with which it has been working «for years».
These courses emerge, in 2019/20, with renewed study plans, but also with many new faces, as far as the faculty is concerned.
«I would say that, in addition to the training offer, the other big news at ISMAT, this year, is the renewal of the faculty. In the team we created, we wanted to have professors who settle in the Algarve and who live in the institution and who also live in the Algarve region, since for us the connection to the community is critical», said Célia Gonçalves Pires.
In this way, «many teachers from abroad will come to settle in the Algarve, other teachers who are already in the Algarve who will have their contractual situation with the ISMAT strengthened, so that we can count on them on a full-time basis».
The higher institute in Portimo will invest in doctorates, but also «in the arrival of foreign professors, who bring us a broader perspective and who also provide us with the development of another strategic aspect, which is the internationalization of the institution».
Another bet of the new direction has been the renovation of the ISMAT facilities. In the main building, located in the historic center of Portimão, several rooms are being worked on.
The objective is to guarantee «the adequacy of the design of the facilities, the adequacy of equipment (namely of the technologies) and the adequacy of teaching methodologies».
“We will have rooms, I would even say corridors, where students and teachers can work as a team. We will have rooms for professors to respond directly to this interdisciplinarity that we intend, therefore, we will not have individual directors' offices. We will have offices in and cleaner open space to foster teamwork,” he says.
Célia Pires also promises «the introduction of more entrepreneurial, more active methodologies, many of them based on case studies», as well as «a clear connection with the community», one of the banners of the current administration of ISMAT.
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