Set up the UPC Doctorate School

The Board of Governors has approved the set up of the UPC Doctorate School to increase the visibility of these studies and thus contribute to make them more professional. This agreement strengthens the approach initiated with the pilot experience conducted at the University in 2009-2010.

The Doctorate School is the new academic unit to organize doctoral studies at UPC.BarcelonaTech (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and promote a much more attractive research environment. The school seeks to stress the quality, the concentration of research critical mass, the internationalization and the interdisciplinary nature of the PhD Programmes.

The quality assurance refers to the recruitment of faculty & teaching staff, the design of educational programmes and the monitoring process of the student progress. Regarding the critical mass, the relationship between programmes and research groups as well as the collaboration with other institutions will be encouraged. It will be also promoted the dual supervision of doctoral theses along with international universities and the application for Erasmus Mundus PhD Programmes to the European Union in order to attract international talent to the UPC. The Doctorate School will also promote interdisciplinary research topics and skills such as entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and information literacy, language and communication.

In addition, the figure of the student will be strengthened by being considered as junior researcher and by having institutional representation through the Doctoral Student Council, thus the will be able to influence the postgraduate programme improvement. The employment of doctors beyond the academic area will be also promoted.

The UPC Doctorate School organizes its activities into five areas of knowledge: Architecture, Building and Planning, Science, Civil Engineering, ICT Engineering and Industrial Engineering.

The common policies to be applied in each area will refer to the admission criteria, monitoring and assessment of dissertations and academic performance, the thesis tribunal appointments, basic cross-sectional training, PhD programme visibility and seminar organisation, among others.

The Doctorate School is set up now after last year's legislation in this regard at Spanish, Catalan and UPC level. The administrative and technical structure of the school will be assumed by the current Doctorate Office.

Doctorate School