Guayaquil in Ecuador

This week I will be a few days with old academic friends and colleagues at the UEES University in the city of Guayaquil on the Pacific Ocean coast of Ecuador. I visited here the first time in 1998 just 5 years after this institution was started by Carlos Ortega. Fun fact: the first time I visited the city of Guayaquil was in 1983 when I traveled with back-pack through South America. The UEES was partner with Niagara College and College of the Rockies (BC) in a project funded by the Canadian government on tourism development and ecosystem restoration (we worked on new curriculum development, teacher training and experiential learning with a local conservation NGO). Since then UEES has done a lot of expansion and this week we will sign a cooperation agreement between UEES and Seneca. We will also deliver a workshop at a national conference of electronic engineers hosted at UEES.

The campus has a wonderful green design and now also a complete conference center (see photo above). They offer many of their courses in English which makes them a great partner for exchanges of staff and students.

A wonderful campus with some nice places to hang out such as this cool coffee shop....

Andrea is in charge of all the international partnerships at UEES. She knows what life, study and work in other countries is because she spent a few years in Germany and the USA. Andrea oversees the assistance of students from many different places in the world:

Next visit she will have Seneca in Toronto on that map as well. The Canadian flag is already there and they also have some students from Holland (Radboud Uuniversity in Nijmegen).

Many UEES students find their way to Canada which is a popular destination for them. And they have a very nice team of support staff for incoming students from around the world.