ISLA - Polytechnic Institute of Management and Technology in Vila Nova de Gaia has just celebrated its silver anniversary. With 30 years of existence, it started its activity in 1989 and has been able to draw on the accumulated experience, an image of quality in the area of Higher Education in Portugal.
The public image of ISLA is without doubt the one of credibility and trust. We have social and financial sustainability. We have each time more consistent training supplyand quality, truly suited to the market needs, providing an expanding range of opportunities at all levels, based on strong bond of cooperation with national and international businesses and higher education institutions.
What we are now is based on a past full of contributions and creativity of those who have worked here and made ISLA Gaia grow.
My special thanks to all the teachers, staff, students, students' association and in particular to the members of the Administrative Board.
I am sure that we are on the right track for the full affirmation of ISLA, which is a time consuming process that has to be undergone safely in a constant adaptation to the changes that are being imposed by the government and by the guidelines of the European Union. The adaptation to the Bologna Process is a clear example of this.
In response to these challenges, ISLA Gaia adopted the ISLA-Gaia Plan 2025 - a Strategic Plan for its reconstruction and repositioning as a as a higher education institution of national prestige.
Based on the experience and on the example of similar institutions of reference, this ambitious plan seeks to maximize the main competitive advantages of ISLA-Gaia, as well as taking advantage of partnerships n whch it will integrate.
Waiting anxiously for the cited date of 2025, the one that symbolized and is the institution's expectations milestone, ISLA-Gaia faces the complex reality of having to prepare itself for a more challenging external environment in the coming years.
We can only be proud of the extraordinary progress that we have achieved in the relatively turbulent environment that the Portuguese higher education has been experiencing over the last years. And for this reason, full of hope, I am looking forward to the future.
Guiding us through this ambitious vision, this is the best way to ensure that our institution will be amongst the best, enhancing in all of us proud to belong to ISLA.
In this sense, with the contribution of all and with great propects for success, ISLA will continue its vision for 2025.
Prof. Doutor António Lencastre Godinho (PhD)
President
