The plan for this day was to visit and attend a series of presentations at the, “Universidad San Francisco de Quito” from 9:30 pm until 4:00 pm. This university’s webpage is located here: http://www.usfq.edu.ec/   Students who attend this university are commuters who usually live with host families in the area. It was founded in 1988 by a group of local scholars who wanted to establish the first self-funded liberal arts oriented private university in Ecuador.

Here is a short video that explains the basics of this university. I have embedded the video directly from the university’s Facebook page located here: https://www.facebook.com/USFQEcuador

Currently the university is divided into two campuses. The main one is located located in the Cumbayá area of Quito, the second campus is located in the Galápagos Islands. Here is a small video of the Cumbayá campus that my study group visited. You will notice that it is very picturesque place.

 

The university is divided in ten colleges, here is the picture showing the names of each college and the undergraduate as well as post graduate professional subject area degrees that each one college offers. International as well as students in Ecuador are welcome to apply for admission to any of these programs.

Currently, the university is the only one in the world that has a campus located on the Galápagos Islands. These islands make up one of the 24 provinces in Ecuador. The islands consists of a volcanic archipelago located in the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, this location is an ideal place for students who wish to study Evolution, Marine Wildlife, Ecology, and Diverse Ecosystems. Here is a picture of the classes offered on this campus.

Moreover, the university also offers a few masters degrees, some professional certificates and one PhD degree. Here is a list of these programs sorted by the colleges that offer them in alphabetical order.

College of Biological and Environmental Science

Master of Ecology
Master of Microbiology
PhD in Microbiology

College of Business and Economics:

Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Master of Banking and Finance
Master of Marketing and Sales

College of Health Sciences

Professional Certificates in:

Orthodontics
Periodontics
Health Management
Orthopedic and Traumatology
Radiology and Imagining

College of Law

Master of Administrative Law
Master of Business Law

College of Science and Engineering

Master of Applied Mathematics
Master of NanoElectronics
Master of Management of Construction and Real State Business

College of Social Science and Humanities

Master of Education

Midway though the series of lectures that we attended, we did have time to eat lunch at the college cafeteria. Here is a picture of the menu. I found the food to be unusually good considering that it was cafeteria style food.

According to the lectures given by faculty/staff at the university, approximately 90 percent of the current faculty have doctoral degrees and have studied and/or worked outside of Ecuador. This is highly unusual for Ecuador as most university faculty usually have masters degrees and very few higher education institutions in Ecuador offer doctoral degrees.

Furthermore, this university is one of the three universities and the only private university in Ecuador awarded a “A” ranking accreditation status, which as I wrote about earlier in these series of posts, is governed  through the, “Consejo de Evaluacion Acreditacion y Aseguramemiento de la Calidad de la Education Superior (CEASES). Also, as I previously stated, this ranking is  highest accreditation status that a Ecuadorian university can receive.

We departed the university shortly after 4:00 pm and headed back home to our bed/breakfast location. Later on we went out to dinner at a local restaurant.

Here is a picture of the front cover of the menu at the restaurant.

Here is a picture of the meal I ordered. It was delicious.

We headed back to our lodging and called it a day.