P.PORTO is excellence in higher education but is also a space of ideas and results in which we make a difference. We are a dynamo of cultural change, in our city, in our region, in our country. We try to meet current demands, building bridges between academia, the world of work, and civil society. We rank fourth among first-choice higher education institutions, and fifth among several students. Informal education, our aim is full employment of our graduates and post-graduates. To guarantee it, we align our educational portfolio with the needs of the business and social world. We build strategic cooperation with the local economic agents and contribute concrete solutions to real problems. We cooperate with and are a critical mass. We are an international community that stems from cooperation within a 300-entity network spread over four continents.
We encourage a culture of innovative, applied research, carried out in an educational atmosphere both irreverent and transversal and focused on practice. It is not enough to be one of the best. It is not enough to rank well among first-choice institutions. To expand what distinguishes us, the P.PORTO balanced profile of knowledge and academic and applied skills is what matters. Establishing partnerships and innovating. National and internationally.
The mission of P.PORTO Welfare Services is to carry out school social action policies to ensure equity in access to higher education, especially to students with financial difficulties, as well as to provide students with quality services that contribute to their academic success. To carry out its mission, P.PORTO favors close monitoring of students' needs in its various areas of action: scholarships, emergency assistance, food, accommodation, healthcare services, psychology, and social counseling, cultural knowledge, sports, among other services that characterize an active social policy. P.PORTO Welfare Services aims at being innovative, focused on students' interests, and on developing social policies within the P.PORTO community.
P.PORTO's commitment to quality and quality assurance, enshrined in the rules of the institution, is the basis for the development of its mission. For this reason, the entire P.PORTO universe is covered by its internal quality assurance system (SIGaQP.PORTO), which, in turn, articulates with the various Teaching Units, systematically covering the range of activities developed by P.PORTO in the scope of its institutional mission. The objective of the system is to strengthen the institution's culture of quality, following national and international standards for quality assurance, defining processes, procedures, and mechanisms necessary to implement the Quality Policy and support the Strategic Plan.
The mission of P.PORTO is to create and further knowledge, science, technology, and culture, and to provide students with technical, scientific, artistic, and transverse skills that articulate knowledge and action, to become the agent of transformation at home and abroad, and through intervention contribute to the wise development of society. P.PORTO presently follows a model of decentralized governance, in line with the autonomy of the Schools. P.PORTO governance structure comprises the General Council, the President, the Management Council, and the Academic Council and is presently integrated by the Presidency Secretariat and Education Welfare Services, as well as the Teaching and Research Units.
Our vocation is to teach: not only knowing how to know but also knowing how to do and knowing how to be. We do not just claim it, we do it. We are at the forefront of higher education in Portugal: eight schools, 68 undergraduate courses, 60 master's programs, and 18 500 students make up an open, challenging, and multicultural community Our profile is balanced with about 1500 teachers with academic as well as technological or business competencies and skills, and with teaching practice supported by research that is nationally and internationally recognized.
Our identity is reflected in the transversal educational offers in the number of students that we attract as first and second preferences in the highly qualified teaching staff in our international dimension and our involvement with contemporary innovation challenges. P.PORTO features a range of undergraduate, master's, and other specialization courses in areas covering a wide spectrum of knowledge: Education, Health, Engineering, Hospitality and Tourism, Arts, Management and Technology, Business Sciences, Media Arts, and Design. It is an exemplary vocational training offer, concerned with the acquisition of the basic skills for professional practice and linked to the requirements of innovation and competitiveness.
