ENGINEERING GEOLOGY COURSE

In 1994, the Order of the Engineers decided to create a system of creditation of the engineer courses. On a sumarized form, it may be affirmed that there are two, more direct, consequnces  regarding the declaration of the creditation of a course by the OE: in first place, the creditation is the recognition of the quality of the initial formation offered by the course, in hand, for the exercise of the engineer profission; in second place, the graduates by that course are released from doing the admission test for the OE. Note that, according to the data received in 2000, of the 277 graduations in engineering existing in Portugal, only 77 were credited by the Order of Engineers.

The Engineering Geology Course of the University of Aveiro was the first course on Engineering of Geology in Portugal to be credited by the Order of Engineers (http://www.ordeng.pt). Since then, the creditation has been uninterruptedly renewed until today.

The last renovation of the creditation was aproved, for a period of three years, in 23 of January of 2003, by the National Directing Council of the Order of Engineers, based on the "Opinion" of the Commision of the Creditation of Engineering Geology.

In 2002/2003 a curriculum revision of the Engineering Geology Course came into force, which, amoung other aspects, an approach attempt was made to the curriculum organization considered as more adequate by the OE, having had, in the new structure of the course (comparing to the previous situation), a reinforcement of the basic subjects (actually corresponding to 24% of the global period of classes) and the optional subjects (5 to 8%). The new curriculum organization offers as well: the increase of the practical componente of the learning of the geosciences subjects, such as the insertion of five subjects of Field Geology; the definition of specialization areas adapted to actual relevante issues, to know, Geotecnic, Geo-resources, Geo-environmental Studies and Marine Geology.