Cooperation agreements with industries are an important system to improve educational programs at Escola Politécnica (or "POLI" as it is called) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). The commitment of professors, undergraduate and graduate students in technological research projects is being successfully carried out in cooperation with industries (such as CBMM, Villares, Tupy, General Motors, Samsung, Procter and Gamble, Mercedes Benz, Allan Bradley and Petrobras for example) and other organizations such as banks (City Bank for example), consulting and engineering projects companies (such as Andersen Consulting and Promon, for example), harbours authorities, energy/water supply/reclamation agencies, mining companies (such as CVRD for example), besides a significant number of governmental organizations.

This is a very interesting way to promote applied research, to improve the engineering education and to enlarge the school's budget as well. Moreover, this type of cooperation is helpful for an industrially emerging country as Brazil in a period of economic and social changes. It is expected that these experiences of mutual cooperation can be useful to improve the knowledge and it will be an appropriate system to increase efficiency as well as productivity in all parties.

In this paper rough data and figures concerning to results of years of Poli and Industries joint programs are presented.

Escola Politecnica da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo City, Brazil, was founded in 1893 and at that time very important economic and technological changes occurred in the State (a Province at that time) of São Paulo: the former agriculture activities were being replaced by industries. In order to support the new demand for engineers at industries, Poli was founded. Since its establishment and after 1934 also, when Poli joined to Universidade de Sao Paulo, a very strong link with industries was developed.

The faculty staff includes a lot of experts who work in industries. The curricula of engineering courses - Civil, Mechanics, Automation, Electric, Naval, Industrial, Chemistry, Mining, Metallurgy and Materials - is based on two years ("Biênio") of solid engineering science subjects, followed by three years of specialized courses with high technological content. A new and modern curricula is being discussed and partially implemented.

For over one hundred years more than 18.300 engineers have been graduated by Poli. Engineering education is the most important Poli's objective, besides technological research and development and extension of services. Escola Politecnica is one of the most important and large USP's units.

In the 2nd. semester of 1996, about 4,400 undergraduate students were involved with Poli besides 2,000 graduate students in Master and PhD programs, 517 faculty professors and 520 administrative staff. There are 8 engineering careers and a special cooperative course strongly linked to industries and about 140.000 square meters of buildings bearing 13 Departments Chemistry, Civil Construction, Computation and Digital Systems, Energy and Electric Automation, Electronics, Structures and Foundations, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Mining, Metallurgy, Naval and Ocean, Industrial and Transportation. CEE is provided by PECE "Programa de Educação, Continuada em Engenharia", with about 600 students in 1997's lst.cycle ( February to May ), and by Fundação Vanzolini.

Several types of agreements are being used by USP and Poli to join to external institutions. Some examples are as follows:

- a direct system for establishing of formal agreements ("convenios") between Poli/USP and industries. This system is based on a research plan of activities managed by a professor coordinator on behalf of the Rector or Dean. At present about 100 agreements are being conduced by Poli, besides more than 300 already completed (table 1).
- by means of the foundations linked to USP/Poli as FDTE - "Fundação para o Desenvolvimento Tecnológico da Engenharia", FIJSP - "Fundação de Apoio à Universidade de São Paulo", FCTH -" Fundação Centro Tecnológico de Hidraulica" and FCAV "Fundação Carlos Alberto Vanzolini."

At present via FUSP 36 projects are being conducted; one of the most important is the support to PECE, the Poli's arm to promote CEE (1) As mentioned above, about 600 graduate students are engaged to PECE during the 1997's 1st. cycle and more than 18.000 have concluded courses in the past 18 years (table 2).

With FDTE, Poli's professors and students have conduced 525 engineering projects, such as for the São Paulo City subway system (Metro), modern highway networks, the development of a lot of hardware and software, besides 75 special training courses for industries. FDTE was also the former Poli's arm of CEE, recently transferred to FUSP. For several years FDTE has contributed to scientific iniciation grants for undergraduate students.

Table 1. Joint programs under way, 1991-1997. up

FCTH is a foundation linked to a hydraulic engineering center and with water supply/management state agencies. Besides CEE courses, FCTH is specialized in modeling of dams, harbours and sedimentation process.

Finally, "Fundação Vanzolini" linlced to Poli's Industrial Engineering Department, is very active in CEE also teaching specialization courses on areas such as, total quality, productivity and management. It is also an ISO certification agent. At present, it is involved in multimedia courses, such as the project "Engenheiro 2000" (Engineer 2000), a part of the REENGE Program.

Table 2. PECE's Specialization courses (360 hours) and number of students, lst. cycle, 1997. up

- the professors of USP/Poli are able to give consulting during a limited number of hours a week, under special conditions. This is another interesting type of agreement.

On the undergraduate students' side a Junior Company and a Civil Construction Pilot Office are in operation.

Poli is a large engineering school and a lot of educational and research projects are being conducted closely related to industries. Some typical examples are as follows:
- PECE - "Programa de Educação Continuada em Engenharian, a CEE successful program being conducted more than a decade. More than 18.000 engineers and other professionals from industries have attended the courses since the program started. In the table 2 there are some examples and figures on the specialization courses under way. Besides specialization there are updating courses also. All the courses are scheduled once or twice a week, in the evenings, for 3 months. The lecturers are Poli's professor or invited experts.
- Petrobrás special projects - Petrobrás, a state owned oil exploration, refining and distribution company has established cooperation programs with Poli aiming two objectives. The first is to develop some tools to properly control the position system of drilling platforms when operating in very deep ocean sites as is the case of Brazilian oil fields in Campos Basin, Rio de Janeiro State. The Campos Basin oil fields are located at 1,000 to 2,000 meters depth water and they are probably the deepest oil field known at present time. The second objective of the cooperation agreement is concerned to specialization courses on subjects like hydrodynamics, structural stability, monitoring of deep ocean systems, all of them directly related to the projects being conducted as described above.
- postgraduate MS' and PhD's programs. Since 1970, Poli has graduated 2,026 MS and 738 PhD (until April 1997) in engineering. At present there are 11 postgraduate programs covering the most important areas of the engineering. The number of postgraduate students is about 2,000 mainly professionals who work in industries (which makes more than 1,000 considering that there are about 500 scholarship students with grants by CNPQ, FAPESP and CAPES). These figures indicate that the postgraduate programs are another important link between Poli, industries and other external organizations. Normally the themes of the research projects and the dissertation /thesis presents a technological and innovative content closely related to the needs of the industries.
- special compact and modular MS'programs. As from the early 90's Poli is developing experimental MS' in-company tailor-made programs, technological research centers and other universities, emphasizing the technology. Brazil is a large country, like a subcontinent, and it is very difficult for the engineers who works overland to attend universities to recycle their knowledge. Then, Escola Politecnica provided in-company courses because there are a lot of engineers who fell the need of a MS's degree. Some interesting and successful programs in this way were developed by the Mining Engineering Department (2) such as:
- Araxá Project (developed in-company at the City of Araxá, about 600 kilometers from Sao Paulo City by road) supported by IBRAFOS - Brazilian Phosphate Rock Producers and membership companies, which produced 7 MS'dissertations;
- CETEM- Centro de Tecnologia Mineral Project (developed in Rio de Janeiro City, about 400 kilometers from Sao Paulo City by road), supported by CNPQ; 12 MS'dissertations were produced and a new PhD's program is under way;
- Ouro Preto Project (Ouro Preto is an old capital of Brazil, in Minas Gerais State, located about 600 kilometers from Sao Paulo City by road), supported by UFOP - Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto and Fundação Gorceix. In Ouro Preto is the oldest and the most famous school of mines in Brazil; after the retirement of a number of professors, the renew of the faculty staff and the needed acadernic titles were the main reasons for the establishment of an agreement with Poli; and as Ouro Preto lies in the hearth of an important iron ore mining province, besides the professors a group of engineers from CVRD, SAMARCO, SAMITRI and MBR - all big iron ore producing companies - joined the MS' program. Some dissertations are on way or being concluded; and finally,
- CVRD Project, started in 1995, having 15 engineers, all developing technological studies in themes of interest for both CVRD and Poli.

The authors' intention was to show through this paper the importance of cooperation agreement of schools of engineering with several types of industries in a developing country like Brazil. In spite of still very low economic significance of these agreements at present, it is necessary a great effort to increase them in near future, for it is very well-known that public resources are becoming more and more scarce. Private enterprises must therefore understand the importance of mutual cooperation with universities so that can use their full potencial in order to enhance the quality of their products and services.

1) Salvagni, R.B.; Damasceno, E.C. Engineering education as lifelong education: an eighteen -year experiment and new challenges in continuing engineering education. In: World Congress of Engineering Education and Industrial Leaders, Paris, 1996. Proceedings. Paris, UNESCO/UNIDO/UATI/WFEO, 1996, v. 1, p. 381-4.

2) Damasceno, E.C.; Chaves, A.P. Sucessful experience of the Politecnica's School Department of Mining Engineering in continued education and in-plant MS/PhD programs. In: World Conference on Continuing Engineenng Education, 6, Sao Paulo, 1995. Proceedings. São Paulo, IACEE/EPUSP/EE-UFRJ, 1995.

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