Eighteen years after its first grade 6 in the Capes evaluations, the Graduate Program in Agricultural Microbiology achieved the prestigious concept 7 in 2022, establishing its place among the best evaluated programs in the country. The change in level once again attests to the standards of excellence of the courses offered, opens up new prospects for students, professors and graduates, and also imposes new challenges on the group to remain on the list of the most highly regarded.

“The way I see it, the program is people: the graduates we train, the advisors, the staff. So, concept 7 is the natural result of very serious, very consistent work by all these people, aimed at keeping up with the growth of the area, new trends, and implementing the necessary actions,” says Professor Wendel Batista da Silveira, coordinator of the PPG since 2021. The work of the entire team, says the professor, has built the program’s credibility and enabled many of the hundreds of graduates from the PPG to enter the job market, either in the academic field or in the private sector. “We have significant scientific production, really strong internationalization actions. In other words, supervisors always undergoing training, students having opportunities for sandwich doctorates, and many international partnerships and agreements signed,” he says. “We have always seen ourselves in this role of disseminating and fostering scientific discussion in the area of microbiology and biotechnology, and this is what we have been doing for many years now.”

Now, with the grade 7, the prospect is that even more can be done, as the funding increases and there is even an impact on the number of scholarships offered. “With the increase in financial resources, we will be better able to help buy consumables and provide greater support for participation in events, which ends up bringing benefits to the whole community.” The coordinator also highlights the indirect gain, in terms of prestige, which benefits the curriculum of students and graduates, and which expands, in a kind of virtuous cycle, the prospects for partnerships and funding, whether from development agencies or the private sector. “Grade 7 is a recognition of quality – of course it alone won’t guarantee anything, but it puts us in excellent conditions to compete for partnerships, for example.”

New challenges
The new grade was awarded at the end of 2022, and refers to the period from 2017 to 2020. Now, in 2023, the PPG is pursuing its strategy to maintain the concept for the four-year period ending in 2024. “We can draw an analogy with sport: in any sport, getting to the top, to a gold medal, is hard work. But staying there is even harder. So we’re aware that the challenge will be greater now,” says Wendel.

The main strategy, of course, is to continue with the high standards of productivity and teaching, but the PPG is also working on improving its strategic planning and implementing actions to expand and strengthen the technical training already offered to students. “We are paying special attention to incorporating transferable skills, or soft skills, into our pedagogical planning. The Dean of Research and Postgraduate Studies has created several courses that are already being offered for this purpose.” The PPG also runs a continuing education program, which this semester is working on the concepts and importance of scientific dissemination. At the same time, it’s starting a project to disseminate its own actions in a more systematic way, with the intention of presenting its achievements to society as a whole. “In line with all this, next year we’re going to organize an event to popularize science in the field of microbiology, with a focus on primary and secondary education.”

Expanding the PPG’s international presence, which is already recognized as solid, is also among the challenges for this quadrennium, with the search for varied partnerships and co-tutorship agreements. “And we’re also going to work to increase our participation in society, with extension projects and cooperation agreements with companies. This may stimulate the search not only for public funding, but also for private funding.”