The University of Evora

The main cloister at the university An original classroom with 1700’s tile and a pulpit – no, I didn’t have to use it!
The university was founded as the Universidade de Espiritu Santos by the Jesuits in 1559. It was a monastery and has a number of chapels still in the building. It also has a church connected to it where services are held for the students. In 1779 the Portuguese government expelled all the religious and closed the universities. This university was not reopened until 1974.
I taught a MS class in Information Systems for students who work full time and then take classes in Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Some classes were 5 hours long. I had sore jaws from speaking slowly and the students had headaches from thinking in English! Although I was in a modern classroom, some of the old ones are still used and have terrible acoustics!

Back of the main university building Chapel down the hall from my office

The University of Evora owns a number of buildings in Evora. I was in the main building. They do not have enough room for all the faculty and grad students so offices usually have 3 to 4 people sharing them. I had 3 other people in my office but one was being an admin person for a semester so she had another office. One guy only came on Tuesday from lisbon to teach 2 classes and then left (more about this later.) The other guy was a Ph.D. student who was very helpful with the network but was not around much. He'd come in on Tuesday when the other prof was there and do some work for him and then I never saw him.

About the students ... I taught grad students who work full time and show up on Friday afternoon and/or Saturday AM to do classwork. They came from a driving radius of up to 3 hours. They could all understand English pretty well and would stop me if they needed to translate for each other. They also asked lots of questions about the US university system since it is very different from their's. Even though this is starting to change, students are not very familiar (nor do they like it much) with the idea of doing assignments all during the semester to show what they are learning - or as part of the learning process. They prefer to take 2 exams and write one paper and have that be their grade. One engineering prof said she has been trying to give problem sets throughout the semester and her student don't see why they should do these.
At the end of the semester, if they do not like their grade, they have to be given another exam to allow them to change their grade. This caused a small problem since I was already back in the US when the re-exam time came around. I had to email them an exam and then they emailed me the answers.


The promotion system for faculty is very different too. The federal government determines how many asst., assoc, and full profs (or the rough equivalents) there can be in a department or faculty. Once that number is reached, no more people can be promoted until someone dies or quits or retires. This means there is no incentive for research since there is no hope to get promoted or get a raise (unless everyone gets a raise).
The pattern is to get a BS, MS and Ph.D all at the same university. By law, if you are accepted into the Ph.d program then you are guaranteed a faculty position when you finish your degree. Even the university president routinely comes from the same university. Very little mixing of backgrounds occurs!
It is common for faculty to teach at several universities as adjuncts or for faculty to live in a different city and commute to Evora. We met a number of people at the convent who came from Lisbon one night, taught the next day, and then left to go home. When I inquired about office hours and how students get their questions answered, I was told that students should ask questions after class. A few people tried to use email to answer questions but they said that the students didn't take advantage of that.

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Arriving in Portugal
In Evora!
Where we lived
Places we went