Católica Porto Business School (CPBS) understands the growing need for students to signal differentiating factors when presenting themselves to the job market. The skills necessary for a successful career are not exhausted in the excellence of the academic education that distinguishes CPBS, the enrichment of the curriculum is very important and should be encouraged. In this sense, the School believes that the possibility of including a supplementary document to the diploma, the Global Education Certificate (GEC), signalizing elements of commitment and the challenges that have been achieved by students during their academic career, is a key differentiating factor.

With this purpose, the CPBS intends:

1. That the GEC encourages students to have a deeper international experience and to get actively involved in volunteering activities, reinforcing the concern with the human development of students and with the formation of ethical and socially responsible people.
2. To encourage students to have an enriching training experience that goes far beyond academic performance, involving participation in internships, in the various skills development activities offered by the School and in other extracurricular activities.
3. To use the GEC to signal more consistently elements of excellence in the students' academic pathway. These elements should be identified in advance (e.g., awards or performances of excellence in particular courses) and validated administratively.

The Certificate

The award of the GEC is divided into two types of components:

Compulsory components

To obtain the certificate, students must necessarily fulfil three conditions:

1. Completion of at least 60 ECTS: i) ECTS carried out at CPBS in English; or ii) ECTS carried out outside Portugal;
2. Participation in volunteering activities, performing at least 30 hours of volunteering, in initiatives coordinated by UDIP/CASO or that may be validated by UDIP/CASO
3. Have at least 8 points in the scoring component.

Scoring component

Students must obtain at least 8 points in extracurricular activities.

Table 1 – Activities considered in the scoring component

Procedure for obtaining the GEC

It is the student's responsibility to request the issuing of the GEC through the platform developed for this purpose: available here. 

In addition to the GEC, students may request, through the platform, the issuing of individual certificates relating to the activities they have performed during their degree and that are listed in Table 1.

At the end of each semester of the degree, the student must report the volunteering activities carried out outside UDIP/CASO, filling in the document provided in Annex 2, and sending this document to UDIP/CASO. UDIP/CASO must validate the reported volunteering activities within 30 days after receiving the document.

The request to issue the GEC can be made during the last semester of the degree or after the completion of the degree, and may be requested up to one year after its completion. If requested during the final semester, the certificate will be issued subject to completion of the degree.

Once the GEC has been requested through the platform, the student must send the following information  to the Global Education Office (globaledu.cpbs@ucp.pt ) and should carefully check the information before sending it:

- a list of the courses taken at CPBS in English, indicating the semester and year in which they were completed (or the expected date of completion);

- the Transcript of Records and the Study Plan approved by the Academic Coordinator for Mobility, in relation to the international mobility undertaken;

- the volunteering activities coordinated by UDIP/CASO and/or other volunteering activities that have been validated by UDIP/CASO (or that can be validated by UDIP/CASO by filling in Annex 2);

- the activities considered in the scoring component (see Table 1) that were carried out during the degree programme.

The deadline for issuing the certificate is up to 60 days after the request.