Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR Government, Dr. Alexis Tam Chon Weng, President of IFT, Dr. Fanny Vong and Rector of University of Evora, Prof. Ana Costa Freitas took a photo together after the signing ceremony
On 23 October, Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) and Universidade de Évora, Portugal mutually entered into a formal cooperation agreement. Under the witness of Dr. Alexis Tam Chon Weng, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of Macao SAR Government, President of IFT, Dr. Fanny Vong, and Prof. Ana Costa Freitas, Rector of Universidade de Évora, Portugal signed the agreement at IFT.
On 17 to 25 September, the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of Macao SAR Government, Dr. Alexis Tam Chon Weng, led several government departments and related representatives to visit Portugal, to foster the connection between Macao and Portugal. During the trip, the Tertiary Education Services Office organised a group from the Macao higher education sector to visit the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and HigherEducation, universities, laboratories and incubation centres.
Established in 1559, Universidade de Évora, Portugal is a renowned higher educational institution in Portugal with a long history. Its HERCULES Lab engages in a lot of research and projects on cultural heritage conservation and restoration, as well as on the identification of the material and structure of cultural relics. With advanced equipment, the laboratory has a research team consisting of experts, postgraduate students and interns from around the world. They also participate in research projects supported by European Union. Universidade de Évora offers postgraduate degree programme in cultural heritage, and its HERCULES LAB provides technical support for the programme.
Through this cooperation, IFT hopes to promote faculty and student exchange, internship placement, joint research and other forms of institutional collaboration in postgraduate studies with Universidade de Évora, Portugal in the future. This will also provide opportunities for IFT Heritage Management bachelor degree programme graduates to further their studies at the Universidade de Évora.
In addition to provide high quality of tourism education, IFT has been expanding its global network of cooperation, in order to enhance its level of internationalisation. Currently, IFT maintains close connections and cooperations with 101 institutions and tourism organisations from 30 countries and regions, allowing students to conduct overseas exchange and internship programmes for one semester to widen their horizons.
Being the first institution accredited by the UNWTO.TedQual Certification System for tourism education, IFT has now 8 bachelor degree programmes with the Certification. Currently, the Institute has the most number of bachelor degree programmes certified under the System of any tertiary education establishment worldwide. In 2017, IFT became the world’s first higher education institution to pass International Quality Review(IQR) from the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). In the same year, IFT has been ranked by the “QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017” as the 2nd best higher education institution in Asia in the field of hospitality and leisure management and the 18th best higher education institution in this field in the world. In addition, IFT has received the Medal of Merit in Tourism from the Macao SAR Government, and won twice the Gold Award in ‘Education and Training’ from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).