About Us
We intend to promote the full development of our students through integrated technical-scientific, sociocultural and human training.
“It is said that intelligence cannot be taught, but it can be awakened, inspired, developed, by correct teaching and under favorable conditions.”
— Prof. Main Coordinator Lino Augusto Tavares Dias
ISPGAYA aims to promote the full development of its students through integrated technical-scientific, sociocultural and human training.
Based on human values, ISPGAYA emphasises the personal and community dimension, training its students in responsible freedom, openness to the future, flexibility in change, solidarity with the world in which it is inserted, participatory responsibility, respect for the ideas and conscience of others and the commitment to building human fraternity.
ISPGAYA also seeks to stimulate the creation and publicising of culture and science through the CID - Research and Development Centre, namely the journal Politécnica, the journal PEC - Psicologia, Educação e Cultura and other relevant scientific publications.
Training Offered
The ISPGAYA training project is based on a set of degrees, professional higher technical courses and masters, aimed at young citizens, and also at those who, albeit less young, have worker-student status. For both, it is crucial to guarantee quality in this higher education, to enhance their employability, acknowledging the decisive contribution that more qualified employees can have in services and in companies.
ISPGAYA seeks, in the diversity of the training offer, to develop applied research projects, and the connection that has been made with the business fabric and other public and private organisations. It also intends to be a structuring pillar in the development of the region, seeking to create conditions for innovation and for strengthening the competitiveness of companies, with the aim of modernising institutions.
The importance of the mobility of students and teachers in the European space is a strategy of ISPGAYA to promote the insertion of students in the world and in the job market.
As a complement, the training offer extends to a set of Postgraduate and specialisation courses.
ISPGAYA continuously assesses the quality of training provided by monitoring trainees in companies, and by the opinion of highly qualified professionals who take part in the training process in the different courses offered. In addition, ISPGAYA regularly promotes the internal self-assessment process, in accordance with quality standards for education and training institutions (ISO 9001:2015; ISO 21001:2020; ISO 14001:2021).
Mission and objectives of the Institution
ISPGAYA’s mission is to train professionals, qualified with higher-level academic degrees, with highly developed skills that allow them to understand scientific knowledge, develop it and apply it in their daily activities, ensuring quality and productivity for employers.
We also seek to prepare citizens who are sensitive to change and innovative entrepreneurship, capable of promoting their own professional reconversion, where necessary, encouraging effective mobility in contact with other professional experiences nationally and internationally. After completing their courses, in active life, they will be able to return to the Institute to continue their training throughout their lives.
Such aspirations can be expressed through keywords that summarise the essential elements in the organisation and practice of Instituto Superior Politécnico GAYA: Qualification, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Social Responsibility. These four elements focus on people, their skills and their action. We therefore defend a proactive institution, where human resources overlap with other resources.
Instituto Superior Politécnico GAYA is meant to be, increasingly, an institution chosen by young people and adults:
- For the excellence of its technical-scientific education, supported by quality, attractive, differentiated and competitive training, which facilitates employability, flexibility and mobility;
- For the continuous improvement of the quality of services provided to the community, training and creating conditions for the successful placement of highly qualified graduates on the market, as a result of their skills and ethics;
- For the solid human and civic formation;
- From the perspective of continuous training it provides;
- For the creative, innovative and useful way in which it serves the community, intervening in cultural life and in shaping the social and cultural agenda of the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia and neighbouring areas;
- By encouraging research;
- For the stimulating and differentiating academic climate it provides, fostering cooperation.
At ISPGAYA, we seek to increase the levels of acknowledgment of the institution, contributing to consolidate the connection of this Higher Polytechnic Institute to schools, the market and society, to establish itself as a reference entity in education in the Region and in the Country.
We also seek to be socially renowned for the prestige of the teaching staff, the excellent training of its students and graduates, the professionalism of non-teaching staff, highly qualified technicians, motivated, committed and with a strong sense of belonging and pride to the institution.
Objectives of ISPGAYA:
- Ensure high levels of training quality;
- Ensure strategies and techniques that can contribute to increasing levels of school success;
- Ensure high levels of employability;
- Promote the reception of foreign students and encourage the mobility of ISPGAYA students;
- Promote the mobility of teachers and staff;
- Promoting training for teaching and non-teaching staff;
- Present new and innovative training offers that respond to emerging areas and diagnosed as necessary for regional and national development;
- Attract new audiences – “unlimited and lifelong training”;
- Develop strategies that enable higher education for all those who have the conditions to be student workers, in line with after-work hours;
- Consolidate and strengthen the teaching staff, enhancing their quality.
ISPGAYA is a polytechnic higher education institution, acknowledged as being of public interest.
President's Message
No final da década de 80 do século XX foi criado o Instituto Superior Politécnico Gaya, enquanto ensino superior não estatal, sediado em Gaia, mas também, e muito, associado à prosperidade com que a mitologia grega identificava a deusa Gaya. Quem o criou, assumidamente como ensino politécnico, fez questão de afirmar que o fazia com o objetivo partilhado de ensinar, sinónimo de transmissão de conhecimento, e para isso dependente de bons professores, mas também com o intuito de treinar, sinónimo de cultivar aptidões, característica de cada estudante, dos próprios, mas também muito dependente das oportunidades das empresas, da motivação e desafios da sociedade contemporânea.
Decorridas décadas, o desafio de então continua oportuno. No ensino superior não queremos comparar superlativos entre politécnico e universitário, antes se pretende privilegiar o desafio do princípio de que o estudante do ensino superior tem de ser autonomamente responsável, pela natureza do próprio ensino a frequentar, e pela adequação da formação à empregabilidade e exigências das empresas, numa economia sujeita a mudança muito rápida dos saberes indispensáveis e em que é necessário, a todo o momento, obter novos conhecimentos.
É certo que, se os conhecimentos e a perícia das técnicas se adquirem, a experiência e o juízo crítico são muito importantes.
Num mundo em que as minúcias da vida e do trabalho, das técnicas e das profissões, se alteram diariamente, quando ainda com mais frequência, a única qualidade humana capaz de fazer frente a tudo isto é a inteligência.
Diz-se que a inteligência não pode ser ensinada, mas pode ser despertada, inspirada, desenvolvida, por um ensino correto e em condições propícias, incentivador de aprendizagens ao longo da vida, capazes de nos fazer crescer técnica, científica e eticamente, como profissionais e como cidadãos.
Estes, continuam a ser os objetivos do Instituto Superior Politécnico Gaya.
— Prof. Main Coordinator Lino Augusto Tavares Dias,
President of ISPGAYA