In 1792, Vice-Roi D. José Luís de Castro, Count of Resende, signed the statutes approving the creation of Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Drawing of Rio de Janeiro, according to the model of the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Drawing of Lisbon, starting the education of subjects that would become the base of engineering in Brazil. Later, on December 4, 1810, the Prince Regent signed an act creating the Royal Military Academy that would succeed and replace the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Design, and from descend directly the Military Institute of Engineering and the famous Polythecnic School of Rio de Janeiro, then named National School of Engineering, modified to School of Engineering and, in October 2004, returning to be the Polythecnical School of UFRJ, now with the name associated to UFRJ. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro was formed by the union of ancient unities of higher education in Rio de Janeiro: the NationalFaculty of Law ; the National Faculty of Medicine, former Academy of Medicine and Surgery ; and the Polytechnic School, each one with autonomy. Other unities have been added to these ones, such as National School of Fine Arts, National Faculty of Philosophy and several courses that succeeded the pioneers. The University of Brazil, as Federal University of Rio de Janeiro was first named, represented a fundamental role in implementation of higher education in the country.
Structure
The Polythechnic School - Poli, with Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute - Graduate School and Research in Engineering - COPPE, the School of Chemistry and the Professora Eloisa Mano Institute of Macromolecules are the unities that constitute the Center of Technology of UFRJ. Having 222 high qualified professors, more than 200 Doctors, the Polytechnic School of UFRJ is, nowadays, the largest federal school of engineeringeducation in Brazil. It excellence in quality of education can be represented by relevance of several projects and researches developed in its laboratories, by academic awards collected by the professors and students and, chiefly, by the prestige and respect that Poli students have in labor market. The institutional relations between Poli and COPPE are a few complex. Although both are distinct unities, the former having as main mission the undergraduate education in engineering and the latter the graduate courses, both share more than 70% of professors, laboratories and facilities. All the undergraduate and graduate courses have professors of both institutions, however the administrative responsibility for undergraduate courses is of Poli and for the graduate courses is of COPPE. Poli is also subdivided in departments, which are the smallest administrative instances of UFRJ.
Departments
Below, the twelve departments of Poli that are responsible for offer more than 600 subjects annually:
Courses
The Polytechnic School offers thirteen undergraduate courses in Engineering:
Partnerships
The Polytechnic School has partnerships with some of the most important research centers of Brazil: the PetrobrasResearch Center, the Eletrobras Research Center, the Research Center in Mineral Technology and the Institute of Nuclear Engineering. All these centers provide to Poli students training, laboratories and internships.
