The Graduate Program in Production Engineering is composed of postgraduate courses, seminars, studies and the preparation of a dissertation or thesis. This group of postgraduate courses will consist of compulsory subjects and electives. Compulsory courses are generally basic and are offered by area of concentration, providing unity to the course, while the electives round off the student’s training with specialized skills. Courses are by semester, and the semesters are defined by the Collegiate Program. The basic unit for the duration of a course at PPGEP is the credit – a credit corresponds to 15 hours of theoretical or practical classes. Over the first year of the course, the academic master’s and doctorate student must take at least 24 credits.
The courses are semestrial, with the first semester starting in March and the second in August. Courses will eventually be offered more intensively during July or January to February, and may even allow for visiting professors. The activities are offered on-site – the student must attend at least 2/3 of the scheduled activities in a subject in order to be able to take the partial and total exams for each class.
Master
Course credits for the Master’s program are distributed with 12 (twelve) credits for compulsory subjects and 12 (twelve) for elective courses, giving an overall total of 24 (twenty-four) credits.
The minimum term for completing the Academic Master is 12 months and the maximum is 24 months, starting from the month/ year of initial enrolment as a regular student until the month/ year of the actual defence of the dissertation.
Doctorate
38 credits are required to obtain a Doctorate degree, spread between compulsory and elective subjects. At the discretion of the Collegiate Program, credits can be used in the master’s degree to apply to the necessary credits to the doctorate according to the rules of the course. For the doctorate, the minimum term is 24 months and the maximum is 48 months, starting from the month/ year of the initial enrolment as a regular student until the month/ year of the actual defence of the thesis.
Distribution for course credits are: 16 for compulsory subjects and 22 for elective courses, amounting to an overall total of 38 credits.
Each doctorate student is assigned a Monitoring Committee (CA) that will be instituted by the Collegiate within a maximum period of 6 months after the student begins the course. The Committee’s primary mission will be to continuously monitor the student’s program of studies.
Approval will be required through a Qualification Exam and additional examinations for the Doctorate, developed by the CA. Complementary examinations include an evaluation in the Study I and II subjects, which consist of the presentation and defence of an article accepted to a journal indexed, the first submitted to the journal at a minimum period of 12 months and a maximum of 36 months with the second submitted to the journal at a minimum period of 12 months and a maximum of 42 months.
The following list includes additional complementary exams: (I) thesis project exam in which the student defends the status quo (which the student must master) and details regarding their thesis project (which must be explicitly specified) and (ii) an English language proficiency examination, carried out through either an IELTS or TOEFL test. The minimum performance required in the program is 5.0 points for the IELTS, or 64 points for the TOEFL. The test result must be delivered within a maximum period of two years, commencing as of the month/year of the initial enrolment as a regular student.
The Ph.D. Qualification Examination assesses the student’s knowledge of a topic among five (5) topics involving the subjects related to the compulsory subjects in the Program. These topics are generally released to the student 2 months in advance. Thequalification examination will be held in a minimum period of 12 months and a maximum of 18 months. The candidate who obtains a grade higher than 7 (seven) will be considered approved. If the student fails the qualification examination, that student may attempt to take a new exam once the 6-month period has elapsed. In the event of a subsequent failing grade, the student will released from the program.