Introducing Universidad San Francisco de Quito

I’m taking a break from the regular posting in the Writers’ Lab this week to introduce my new location to you. I’ll be starting in November as an assistant professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito.

The following is what Wikipedia tells us about USFQ:

Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (informally Universidad San Francisco, or simply USFQ) is a liberal-arts, non-profit, private university located in Quito, Ecuador. It was the first totally private self-financed university in Ecuador and the first liberal-arts institution in the Andean region.

Academically, USFQ ranks as one of the eleven-top universities (category A) in the ranking of Ecuadorian universities (being the only totally private university to qualify for the highest category), issued by the Ecuadorian Council of Evaluation and Accreditation of High Education (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación de la Educación Superior CONEA). In 2009, it was ranked first in Ecuador in relation to the number of peer-reviewed scientific publications.

The university now enrolls 5,500 students, 4,500 of whom are undergraduates. The university each year has about 100 indigenous students and 1000 international students participate in USFQ academic programs. USFQ has developed a scholarship program for indigenous students, offering full scholarships to the best students of public high schools throughout Ecuador. Although USFQ receives no funding from the government of Ecuador, its faculty comprises one-half of all the people in that nation who hold a doctorate.

USFQ main campus is located in Cumbayá, outside of Quito (capital city of Ecuador), where students use a library, education and research laboratories, classrooms, and seven restaurants. USFQ is the only university in the world that owns a campus in the Galapagos Islands, and a campus in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve (Tiputini Biodiversity Station), one of Earth’s most biodiverse area.

That’s a short introduction to my soon-to-be work place. I’ll blog over time about my experiences here, as a lecturer, an expat and growing early career researcher.