About UFPE - UFPE

About UFPE About UFPE

The Federal University of Pernambuco (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - UFPE) is one of the best universities in the country, regarding teaching (undergraduate and postgraduate) and research. In the international context, the institution is among the thousand best in the world and the 14th best in the country, according to THE World University Rankings.

UFPE also stands out in national assessments that take into account, for graduation, the students’ performance rates at the National Exam of Student Performance (Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes - Enade), the institution’s structure and the investment in professors and courses. That data is now gathered in the General Course Rate (Índice Geral de Cursos - IGC). It also takes into consideration the postgraduate professors’ academic degree and scientific production – evaluated by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES), which is part of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Ministério da Educação e Cultura - MEC).

In the last few years, as a part of the Federal Government’s education expansion programs, the university has expanded its action and today is composed of three campi, located in Recife, Vitória de Santo Antão e Caruaru.

Between 2005 and 2016, over 2500 new places were created in undergraduate courses (https://www.ufpe.br/cursos).

During this period, over 30 courses were implemented, such as Cinema, Archeology, Museology, Dance, Information Systems, Material Engineering, Energy Engineering and Naval Engineering. This growth comes mainly from the two programs created by the Ministry of Education: the Internalization of Higher Education one and the Support to Plans for Restructuring and Expanding Federal Universities (Reestruturação e Expansão das Universidades Federais - Reuni) one.

Chancellor: Professor Dr. Alfredo Macedo Gomes

Vice-Chancellor: Professor Dr. Moacyr Cunha de Araújo Filho

According to the 2013-2027’s Strategic Institutional Plan (Plano Estratégico Institucional - PEI)

As a public institution, the mission is to promote the qualification of people and to build knowledge and scientific and technical competencies globally referenced, following solid ethical, socio-environmental and cultural principles.

The contemporary university cannot fail to meet its duties, to anticipate and answer requests from the global society – which are always changing, amplifying, renovating themselves and demanding new institutional competencies – that need to be developed as a long-term institutional project. However, it cannot abandon the demands regarding moral responsibility, care for the environment and respect to cultural diversity as cornerstones of a social coexistence more equitable, responsible and just.

To be a global university committed to transforming and developing humanity. The notion of Humanity used here does not reference the numerical group of women and men (demography), but a group of values that we understand as valid, necessary and worthy of being pursued. Some of those values are otherness, justice, human dignity, people’s rights, freedom and cultural differences. A university committed to this vision is necessarily of a “global class”, which means two things at the same time: located among the best in the world and prepared to put the “world” (as a world of human significances, as the meanings humans attribute to their experiences) as the center of its concerns.

As a reference institution, UFPE grounds itself in the following values:

Citizenship – to ensure freedom, rights and individual and community duties;

Cooperation – to interact for the common good: local, regional, national and internationally;

Creativity – to innovate (theoretically and as well as actively) the interdisciplinary construction of relevant knowledge for a socio-environmental transformation.

Sustainability – to produce ethically responsible knowledge, aware of the fact that economic and social development is perfectly compatible with preserving the environment;

Dignity – to treat and respond to each person and community with respect;

Diversity – to respect the distinctive characteristics of people and communities in their ways of existing and acting;

Equity – to promote the fair share of fundamental conditions for human development;

Ethics – to systematically evaluate the purposes and the social and human consequences of the knowledge produced by the institution, in the light of its ideals: respect, integrity and dignity of all people;

Integrity – to promote honesty and ethics in interpersonal relationships, inside and outside the campus.

UFPE gathers over 40 thousand people (https://www.ufpe.br/institucional/ufpe-em-numeros), among which there are professors, administrative technicians and undergraduate and postgraduate students, distributed in three campi: Recife, Caruaru and Vitória de Santo Antão.

In the Campus Recife there are over 40 buildings, among them the Chancellor’s Office, nine Academic Centers, eight Supplementary Bodies, Convention Center, Acoustic Shell, University Club, Daycare, Female and Male Student Houses and the Canteen.

Outside the campus, in Recife, there are the Center of Legal Sciences, University Television and Radio Unit, the Cultural Center Benfica, the Medicine Memorial and the Continuing Education Unit. In the countryside, there are the Academic Center of Agreste, in Caruaru, and the Academic Center of Vitória de Santo Antão, located in the Zona da Mata region.