Fernando Pessoa University (UFP) was recognized as a public interest organization by the Portuguese State in July 1996 and it is the result of a pioneering higher education project initiated in the 1980’s with the creation of two higher education institutes that provided its structural basis. Today, the University is organized in three faculties (Health Sciences, Human and Social Sciences, Science and Technology), one School of Health Sciences and one autonomous unit (Ponte de Lima College). Being a foundational University, UFP has never been market oriented. It has managed to develop into a solid private higher education institution with a strong academic focus and a constant concern with quality maintenance and improvement in what concerns a highly qualified teaching staff, physical infrastructures and equipments and its teaching, research and extension project.
The mission of Fernando Pessoa University is to provide high quality education services and to be an internationally recognized European teaching and research university, contributing to the promotion of private higher education as a public good, associated with private benefits and based on the over-arching principle of public responsibility. The University understands that it has a key role to play in the scientific, cultural, social and economic development of the society and aims at continuously strengthen its position as a member of the international community of scholarly institutions. UFP pledges its commitment to effective, efficient, caring and innovative approaches to teaching, research and community services; client-centered management and administration; and good governance.
UFP sees itself as serving and acting primarily at the national level, even though we understand that importance of geographical constraints in higher education is being blurred at a very fast pace.
The Ware project is a very good occasion to exchange information on city-port relation at European level. Atlantic coast into Iberian countries are plenty of medium-scale harbor cities. This phenomena, similar to other Mediterranean countries, need to be studied from a methodological point of view for achieving these goals:
a.- To establish a typology of case studies to be considered
b.- To propose working lines into the network to deepen these typologies.
c.- To propose a good practices code for each one of the detected types.
