Faculty profile: Paulo Marques, MSE|Coimbra
Paulo Marques is an Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, where he teaches in the Informatics Engineering Department (or what Americans would call computer science). Aside from his regular teaching responsibilities, which include Operating Systems and Enterprise Application Integration, Marques is also the Portugal coordinator for the Master of Software Engineering (MSE) program, one of ICTI’s dual degree programs.
Marques has been involved with the Information and Communication Technologies Institute (ICTI) since its inception, working on curriculum development at the Coimbra campus and coming to Carnegie Mellon in 2007 to be part of the MSE program. “I was extremely impressed with the MSE program—its facilities, the caliber of the students, and the curriculum.”
As part of the ICTI program, faculty members from Portugal have the opportunity to come to Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus to fully participate in their corresponding masters or PhD program. In Marques’ case, while he already had a great deal of experience in teaching Software Engineering, part of his visit to Pittsburgh was to complete a cross-training certification program designed to ensure a seamless educational experience for the Master of Software Engineering students studying in Coimbra. Marques is now a member of the faculties in Coimbra and at Carnegie Mellon.
Marques said that although he had spent quite a lot of time in the U.S. prior to visiting Carnegie Mellon, his visit really broadened his perspective in terms of academic approaches and pedagogy. “The campus environment overall is so rich with opportunities…all the research presentations in the School of Computer Science and the Google talks.”
Marques began his association with ICTI in the spring of 2006, just as ICTI was being formed, participating in the institute’s early planning and envisioning work. He came to Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus in January 2007 to begin his work with the MSE program and with the Institute for Software Research International (ISRI). His areas of focus included curriculum development, teaching, and meeting with the MSE students and faculty. Marques was the first faculty member from Coimbra to be certified as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon.
“The teaching environment at Carnegie Mellon is amazing…to see the interactions between the students and faculty, the mentoring, and the research was impressive.”
Did Marques stay inside the whole time? “I really enjoyed playing a few games with the students,” he grinned, “and I taught a bunch of the MSE students how to in-line skate for the first time.”
Now that he has returned to Portugal, Marques is continuing his work with the ICTI program by helping to get the word out to software development and other high-tech corporations in Portugal about ICTI and the dual-degree MSE program in particular. “These corporations are thrilled to have a pool of students with these dual-degree credentials—masters degrees from Carnegie Mellon and from the University of Coimbra. It’s like the best of both worlds.”
