Established in 1979, the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra is a Public Higher Education Institution located in the West center of Portugal, in the city known for centuries as the “city of students”.
Covering a huge diversity of training areas, from agriculture and environment, education, communication, tourism, arts, management, accounting, and marketing, to health and engineering.
The Polytechnic of Coimbra offers Higher Professional Degree Programmes and Vocational Education, Bachelor's Degrees, Post-graduations, and Master’s Degrees, representing a vital part of the city and playing a critical role in local development and national progress.
Quality education – where the practical component is strongly supported by solid theory training, with a constant concern to adapt training to market demands, a close connection with companies, the incentive to entrepreneurship and internationalization are central pillars of its education, assuring successful careers to its graduates, as well as high employability rates.
Social Service is another core organizational unit responding to the students’ needs using general support, scholarships, board and accommodation, medical services, and sports practice. The Polytechnic of Coimbra represents Modernity, Innovation, Knowledge, Quality, Employability, Citizenship, Solidarity, Multiculturalism.
The Polytechnic of Coimbra Social Service (SASIPC) aims at enabling the access to higher education and successful attendance of all the Institute students, with positive discrimination towards economically deprived students as well as displaced ones, offering the best study conditions, using service provisions and supports, such as Scholarships and emergency supports, Accommodation, Canteens and bars, Health services, Support to sport and cultural activities.
CERNAS – Centro de Estudos de Recursos Naturais, Ambiente e Sociedade (Natural Resources, Environment and Society Study Centre) is a research unit at the heart of our College of Agriculture and also at the College of Agriculture of the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and is part of the National Scientific and Technological System.
Assessed by an International Expert Committee, which substantiated its plurennial funding by the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia (Science and Technology Foundation), CERNAS aims at becoming an excellency research unit in the field of Agricultural Sciences, Science and Food Engineering, Environment and Society and related activities, promoting sustainable development at a regional level as part of global intervention, cultivating and disseminating science and technology for the common good of society.
CERNAS research is at the core of the challenges that humanity will have to face shortly: exhaustion of energy resources and raw material, in conjunction with the global trends of climate change, the demographic increase, and resulting environmental degradation.
