We're trying to sort out a photo feed, but in the meantime, you can see a selection of photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wragge/sets/72157626133498325/
and
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1628652@N20/
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Today I met Luca
I'll leave it to others to provide the summary of today's activities, but for me the highlight was meeting students at FGV, and especially Luca. We met Luca with a student group, but couldn't understand (to his satisfaction) about the 'student entities' he was involved with. So when he saw us crossing the car park, he rushed over and dragged me away so he could show me what he was doing. Student 'entities' are student enterprises - public policy consultancies and projects, work with NGOs etc - a real life opportunity for the students to put their skills into practice. I was so impressed by Luca's enthusiasm for his 'entity' and it had a fantastic office. Their current project was about providing mammography services in some of the less advantaged areas of Sao Paulo - properly useful stuff.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Day 1 - USP - São Paulo
Today we visited our first university - the publicly funded university USP, in São Paulo. The university has a total of 250 Undergraduate programmes, 224 postgraduate programmes and over 1,000 extra curricular programmes. There are 110,000 registered students at USP (which makes us feel a little small!) and 15,000 staff. The students are spread across 7 campuses throughout the state of São Paulo. USP has 4 museums, 4 hospitals, a velodrome, a 5,000 seater stadium, a rowing track, cinema and theatre (free to students!!). The majority of students travel each day to the campus. In total there are only 3,000-4,000 university beds on campus.
To put the size of this campus into some context, we were given a campus tour - by bus - which took a total of 45 minutes, without stopping! The university staff advised us that it takes over one hour to walk from one side of the campus to the other. One of the students we met today, described the university, as a "city within a city".
During the course of the day, we met a number of professors and academic staff from a range of faculties plus two students. All staff and students made us feel extremely welcome and were generous with their time. We shared information about the situation of higher education in the UK - the potential trebling of tuition fees caused a sharp intake of breath from our audience!!
Arthur and Alexandre - two exemplary ambassador students for USP.
We were hosted to lunch by the university in one of their restaurants on campus, where we were treated to typical Brazilian buffett lunch - and a magic show from the professor of maths and computing, who happened to be a magician!
The Magician
This was a fabulous first day on a lush, tropical campus, with people who met the Brazilian reputation for friendliness. We are looking forward to day two...
To put the size of this campus into some context, we were given a campus tour - by bus - which took a total of 45 minutes, without stopping! The university staff advised us that it takes over one hour to walk from one side of the campus to the other. One of the students we met today, described the university, as a "city within a city".
During the course of the day, we met a number of professors and academic staff from a range of faculties plus two students. All staff and students made us feel extremely welcome and were generous with their time. We shared information about the situation of higher education in the UK - the potential trebling of tuition fees caused a sharp intake of breath from our audience!!
Arthur and Alexandre - two exemplary ambassador students for USP.
We were hosted to lunch by the university in one of their restaurants on campus, where we were treated to typical Brazilian buffett lunch - and a magic show from the professor of maths and computing, who happened to be a magician!
The Magician
This was a fabulous first day on a lush, tropical campus, with people who met the Brazilian reputation for friendliness. We are looking forward to day two...
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Everyone's here
So that's a good start.
We're busy settling in now, and will get together this evening to plan our first day of meetings tomorrow. Weather is humid and hot.
We're busy settling in now, and will get together this evening to plan our first day of meetings tomorrow. Weather is humid and hot.
Friday, 11 March 2011
On the way!
The first two members of our party left for Brazil this morning, and I have more or less finished packing to be the third member to depart. Most of the group have at least a day in Sao Paulo to relax and/or explore before we meet up on Sunday evening. Whilst I dont have an itinerary for this weekend, some colleagues already have leisure activities booked for our middle weekend in Rio!
We're not going to Brazil for a holiday, however. All six of our university visits have now been confirmed and we understand they all have a schedule for us. This will be quite some trip, there are some huge cultural differences between Britain and Brazil and I am intrigued how this affects higher education there. We have had a briefing already from the Brazilian Embassy so we aren't going into our meetings cold, but I expect there to be some significant differences even within Brazil that will defy some of our preconceptions.
Our next update should be from Brazil, so stay tuned!
If you are a twitter user and want to follow my updates there, you can do so from my twitter page: http://twitter.com/reevery. Please note that this is my personal account, so any comments on there are my own and do not represent the views of the University of Birmingham or the AUA.
We're not going to Brazil for a holiday, however. All six of our university visits have now been confirmed and we understand they all have a schedule for us. This will be quite some trip, there are some huge cultural differences between Britain and Brazil and I am intrigued how this affects higher education there. We have had a briefing already from the Brazilian Embassy so we aren't going into our meetings cold, but I expect there to be some significant differences even within Brazil that will defy some of our preconceptions.
Our next update should be from Brazil, so stay tuned!
If you are a twitter user and want to follow my updates there, you can do so from my twitter page: http://twitter.com/reevery. Please note that this is my personal account, so any comments on there are my own and do not represent the views of the University of Birmingham or the AUA.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Our home institutions
When we're on the study tour, we'll be representing the AUA and doing our research on behalf of the whole UK HE sector. We are from a cross-section of Universities so between us we have a good background in UK HE. Although we're not going on the tour to represent our individual institutions, it might be of interest to know which they are:
University of Birmingham
City University
University of Lancaster
University of Manchester
University of Newcastle
University of Nottingham
Queen Mary, University of London
University of Surrey
University of Wolverhampton
University of Birmingham
City University
University of Lancaster
University of Manchester
University of Newcastle
University of Nottingham
Queen Mary, University of London
University of Surrey
University of Wolverhampton
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Where are we going?
Unfortunately, we can't vist all of Brazil in our 10 day trip ... We are flying into Sao Paulo, following which we will go to Brasilia and lastly Rio de Janeiro. We plan to visit the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Universidad de Brasilia, Centro Universitario de Brasilia, Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro (aka Universidade do Brazil), Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro.
Having just typed out that lot a bit painfully, I'm happy to report that Brazilian HE is very keen on acronyms - which means we are visiting USP, FGV, UniCEUB, URFJ and PUC Rio respectively. Phew. I think it will take me a little while to get familiar with all those.
The Universities in Brazil are a mixture of private and public foundations. PUC Rio is one of a series of Catholic foundations, which are private. As we don't have many private Universities in the UK, it will be interesting to understand the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each type.
We'll also be visiting the British Embassy and the British Council in Brasilia.
We will of course have a full itinerary of meetings at each institution, but we hope to be able to experience a little of Brazilian life and culture too. If you're Brazilian and/or have been to Brazil and have any tips for interesting places to visit or good places to eat please let us know. Ideas for what to do with a weekend in Rio will be particularly appreciated!
Having just typed out that lot a bit painfully, I'm happy to report that Brazilian HE is very keen on acronyms - which means we are visiting USP, FGV, UniCEUB, URFJ and PUC Rio respectively. Phew. I think it will take me a little while to get familiar with all those.
The Universities in Brazil are a mixture of private and public foundations. PUC Rio is one of a series of Catholic foundations, which are private. As we don't have many private Universities in the UK, it will be interesting to understand the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each type.
We'll also be visiting the British Embassy and the British Council in Brasilia.
We will of course have a full itinerary of meetings at each institution, but we hope to be able to experience a little of Brazilian life and culture too. If you're Brazilian and/or have been to Brazil and have any tips for interesting places to visit or good places to eat please let us know. Ideas for what to do with a weekend in Rio will be particularly appreciated!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)