European researchers visit ESPOL as part of an EU co-funded project to strengthen the capacities of educators

The European researchers who were on campus to lead this conference were José Carlos Quadrado, representing ENTER; Cristina Pinto da Silva, representing P.PORTO of Portugal; and María Isabel Doval and Antonio Pino from the University of Vigo in Spain.
Information was gathered through meetings with senior and middle managers (focus group), where experiences and reflections were shared in an open and highly participatory dialogue.

The rector of ESPOL, Cecilia Paredes, emphasized the importance of the conference as a space that opens the conversation about opportunities for improvement in the skills of the professors that form part of the polytechnic community “because in this way we can multiply what our students will be able to achieve when they graduate”.

José Carlos Quadrado referred to the important role that ESPOL plays within the public education system in Ecuador. “Public education is the backbone of society as a whole (…) it is easier to implement these models in private universities, but we would not be including everyone and this is what we want here, that education, which is the backbone of the whole country, is of high quality,” he said.

For her part, María Isabel Doval said that her visit to ESPOL had left her with a great sense of satisfaction. “We are leaving here convinced that this institution is doing things well and we are here to support all the decisions they want to make in relation to the measures to encourage the good teaching to which we all aspire, putting the students at the center of ESPOL,” she said. He pointed out that projects like ENTITLE are bidirectional and that, in that sense, they are also learning a lot from the Politécnica del Litoral.

The professor from the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FIEC), Ricardo Cajo, participated in the final panel for the presentation and validation of results during this visit. He said that this day allowed them to receive feedback from an external perspective, to identify opportunities for improvement. In addition, during the panel, Ricardo Cajo was publicly recognized for being included in the International Professional Register of Engineering Educators-ENTER, which will allow him to have greater visibility at the international level.

The EENTITLE project was born in 2023 and in November of last year it organized the Engineering Education Conference at ESPOL with the participation of actors from the Higher Education System.