The COPAS Center is committed to the strengthening and consolidation of graduate education in ocean sciences at the University of Concepción. The Center provides advanced training opportunities to young scientists for research careers in oceanography and related areas, through the various ongoing activities at the University of Concepción. Of special relevance is the joint effort between the University of Concepcion and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) funded by the Fundación Andes www.udec.cl/oceanoudec ↑ to improve graduate education and advanced oceanographic research. This program has funded new faculty hires, scholar exchanges with WHOI, Austral Summer Institutes and International Graduate Course Series in Oceanography, equipment purchases and improvement of building infrastructure. Another large educational project that has also contributed to the consolidation of the Doctoral Program in Oceanography is the MECESUP UCO0002. This project has financed new faculty hires, doctoral fellowships, visiting scientists as part of the International Graduate Course Series in Oceanography and the ASI, doctoral student visits to foreign oceanographic centers, subscriptions to new scientific journals, and new equipment.
The UNESCO IOC Chair in Oceanography is devoted to the funding of the International Graduate Course Series in Oceanography, which has the continuous support of POGO (Partnership for the Observation of the Global Ocean) to allow international students to attend the courses at the University of Concepción. This activity is sponsored by the Graduate School www.udec.cl/graduados ↑ at UDEC.
Through all these convergent initiatives the educational opportunities for Chilean and other Latin American students have greatly improved.
The graduate program in Oceanography has been recently endorsed by the National Commission of Graduate Endorsement (CONAP) at CONICYT for another 6 years - the maximum attainable. Since its inception the program has graduated 18 PhD and 33 MSc, and most of them occupy nowadays faculty positions at several national and Latin-American universities.
