IUC with Escuela Politécnica Superior del Litoral (Ecuador)

The overall and specific objectives of this IUC programme were respectively ‘Empowering local university as an institution to better fulfil its role as a development actor in society’ and ‘Generation of knowledge and services based on research in areas of impact for Ecuadorian development’. The IUC programme definitely contributed towards the overall objective and was rather successful in achieving the specific objective. ESPOL stands out in Ecuador in terms of quality in education and research. ESPOL is eager to constantly improve its quality for example through international accreditation processes and investing in (or searching funding for) improvement programmes. The IUC programme gave research culture and research practice at ESPOL a boost, and strengthened the CICYT Research Centre and various decentralised research centres. However, the writing of research results (especially for international peer reviewed journals) remains an obstacle for many ESPOL researchers.