UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DA LISBOA
MASTER STUDENT PROGRAM FALL 2012
Academic Information
The School
The school is located in nice surroundings, on one of Lisbon’s seven hillsides, Colègio de
Campolide, about 10 minutes with the metro from the city center. The buildings are
quite old, but are nice and historical. Nova is the leading business school in Portugal.
Economics and business are the main areas in the undergraduate program. On the
master program Nova has good management courses, approved by EQUIS and AMBA.
The school also scores high on the ranking from Financial Times where the school is
ranked as 29 from 2012, which is actually better than BI. The school is fairly small in
comparison to BI; the school has a total of about 1500 students where 1200 are
undergraduates, 200 master students and approximately 100 exchange students. Nova
has mostly undergraduate students, so the variety of courses is greatest in this area, but
Nova’s graduate programs, especially the management courses have good recognition.
The study structure is not so “self study” centered as BI, with two lectures in each course
every week. The semester is divided into two parts with mid-terms half way into the
semester and a final exam at the end of the semester.
Teaching Situation
The courses are taught in English, and there was no problem regards to the quality of the
English skills of the professors. The semester was divided into two parts. The level of
study is not as high as at BI Norwegian Business School (depending on which courses you
choose). But the lack of difficulty was outweighed by a rather heavy workload for being
3,5 ECT’s courses. There is not too much to read, but there is a lot of group work and
presentations. These presentations are generally expected to be more creative than at
BI, with less focus on theory. The efficiency of what is done may not be at the most
productive when working in teams with the Portuguese people because of the way the
Portuguese structure themselves. You should expect a lot of late comings or not coming
at all to group meetings. The teaching is often divided into two parts, one theoretical,
and one related to case studies. Moreover, one class here is equivalent to 1 hour and 20
minutes, and you do only get a 10-minute break between classes.
Literature and Exams
All the literature to the courses is available in English. The level of literature is the same
as at BI, Nova uses the “normal” international literature books. However, there is
absolutely no need to buy the books; we managed fine with course slides and notes from
the classes. The exams are based on both the theoretical part, and the practical part. The
exam problems are highly related to the practical classes and slides provided by the
teachers. The exam grading ranged from 30-70 % so they are less difficult (usually) and of
much less importance and weight than normally at BI.
Not all courses have final exams. But when there were final exams, about one and a half
to two hours were given. It is not uncommon to have exams on weekends and more than
one in one day.
Literature for the courses
The library could provide you with the necessary literature, as they have 3-8 items of
each book. But you can’t rely on the librarians. They could never find any book you
requested. Try to find them yourself and borrow them. However, as previously
mentioned you do not have to buy books for your courses, and in general we managed
quite well without reading any books at all. Provided material as PPT`s and lecture notes
works fine.
Attended Courses
Course: Positive Organizations
Term: 1
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Final exam (50%), group assignment (15%), case presentation (15%), class
participation (10%), individual assignment (10%)
This course is great. Since the subject is still very new, not much research exist and
therefore the required readings are also limited. The teacher is very nice and he has a
very nice structure of the classes. He gives lectures the first 1,5 hours and for the next
1,5 hours there are student presentation. The workload is light. The requirements are
one group presentation, one small individual assignment and an exam at the end. We
really recommend this course.
Course: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Term: 1
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Group project 65% (final Report grade 25%, peer evaluation 15%, team
sessions quality 20%, individual evaluation 5%), final exam (35%)
Customer relationship management was a very interesting course with a great teacher.
The course intends to provide an insider’s overview of how to recognize, collaborate and
deploy CRM in a company to maximize the value of and for each customer. In the team
sessions we had to present the progress of our work and we received feedback on
improvements. In the final work we delivered slides about a CRM strategy for a bank.
The exam was a lot easier compared to the exam on BI. We really recommend this
course.
Course: Quality Management
Term: 1
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Hand-ins (30%), group presentation (10 %), class participation (20%), final
exam (40 %)
Quality Management is meant to teach you about how to improve processes in
companies from a managerial perspective. The course has of a lot of presentations and
class discussions. The exam was not as we had expected and the questions were hard to
understand, mainly because of the English skills of the teacher. All in all we find the
course easy and interesting, but the teacher was confusing and sometimes hard to
understand.
Course: Project Management
Term: 2
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Group Project (40%), individual assignments: (20%), final exam (40%)
Project management is a very theoretical course and not at all practical (as we first
assumed). We found the course a bit boring and not very useful. The requirements are
one term paper of a maximum of 30 pages (in groups of 4), one presentation of the
group work, 4 small individual assignments and a final exam at the end. The workload
was heavier than most of the other courses we had.
Course: Corporate Social Responsibility
Term: 2
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Class participation, homework and case studies (15%), individual project
(35%), group project (50%)
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a course based on the major tenets of CSR, in
addition to the antecedents and the outcomes of it. In this course the teaching sessions
were divided in two parts, with the first being traditional lectures and the second being
discussions, case studies and presentations. You need to be in most of the classes since
the teacher sent around an attendance sheet in every class. There was no final exam, but
we had one individual and one group project. In the group project we had to survey
either the population or a company. We also had to present our findings on posters at
the end of the semester. Pretty light workload.
Course: Global Human Resource Management
Term: 2
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Class participation, homework and case studies (10%), final exam (40%),
group project (40%), group presentation (10%)
We had the same teacher here as in CSR so the structure was similar with a lot of
discussions, case studies and presentations. This course covered topics especially related
to expatriates such as training and development and re-entry issues. There were also a
lot of culture related topics. For the group assignment we needed to develop a HR plan
for a company going to another country. The course had an easy syllabus where a lot was
self-explanatory.
Course: Social Entrepreneurship
Term: 2
ECTS: 3.5
Grading: Group project (50%), individual project (25%), final exam (25%)
This course aimed at teaching us all the steps involved in starting a social venture. This is
also what we had to do for our group projects. Moreover, in the exam we also had to set
up a venture aimed at solving a social problem, such as unemployment, using all the
steps in one and a half hour. The workload was pretty heavy and you need to be very
creative to do well on the exam.
The Exchange Experience
Before we left
It took some time before we were given adequate information about our stay at Nova.
However there is not too much to know. The only important information is the election
of courses. This is done electronically on a first come first served basis around the first
week in July. This was a very messy process, where the enrolment started at 1 am (since
Portugal is one hour behind Norway). You need to have Firefox or Explorer to access the
site. It is also important to make sure that the picture you provide is the right size.
Moreover, the site was not working correctly so when we started school we did not get
all the courses we chose on the enrolment day.
Traveling
TAP has direct flights from Oslo to Lisbon; it is possible to get relatively cheap flight
tickets if you book in good time before departure. The flight takes 4 hours.
Academic Calendar
The Welcome meeting was on the 4th of September. Lectures started in the same week.
Many of the courses are only half a semester so we had two exam periods. The first was
18-24th of October, and new classes began the 25th. The last day of classes was around
the beginning of December. The exam period was between 10th and 19th of December
(Bachelor students are finished with exams during January).
Housing
We got an apartment before we left, which we found on expatriates.com. For this we
paid €1200 total, which means that we each paid €400. A lot of the other students did
not have an apartment before they came here, but they had no trouble finding one. The
school does not provide housing. We stayed near the Rossio (which is the centre), which
was close to everything. A lot of students recommend living close to Bairro Alto (the bar
and restaurant area), but that can be a lot of noise. We recommend living close to the
center so you are in walking distance to everything. Keep in mind that it gets really cold
inside the apartments and at school, so it is good to pack warm clothes to wear inside.
Costs
Portugal is a very cheap country, at least comparing it to Norway. Alcohol, eating out (525 euros) and taxis especially are really cheap. Groceries are also somewhat cheaper, but
not that much. Transportation was 31 euros for bus/tram/metro, or 24 for only metro,
which was enough for us. In the grocery store you can easily find €2 bottles of wine.
International Office at School
The international office at school is helpful providing you with information of everything
from what to do I Lisbon and practical information regarding the exchange. We spent a
lot of time at the office trying to get the courses we wanted since the enrolment pages
did not work.
Social Activities
We got mails and text messages all the time about events of all type, ranging from a lot
of party-activities to football championships and trips. Being an Erasmus student could
be a really nice and social experience in Lisbon as something happens all the time and
people are really up for doing things. We recommend participating in the activities in the
beginning of the semester so you get to know the other students.
Culture and Language
The culture in Portugal is nice and friendly. That have a more relaxed attitude towards
time and punctuality, but we got used to it, so it was not a problem. Taxi drivers and
people in general speak very bad English so learning a few Portuguese phrases is a good
idea, but body language works fine if not. In the school though, the English quality is
good, and you can communicate in English with any professors or students without any
problems.
Other experiences
There are great surfing opportunities that we would recommend you to try, and with the
nice climate (30 degrees in September and gradually falling towards 15 in December)
makes this a pleasant experience. We went surfing in Carcavelos (20 minutes with the
train from Cais do Sodre) and with La Point (40 minutes from Lisbon)
Moreover, when we arrived in September the temperature was about 30 degrees. We
spent a lot of time at the beach in Estoril (25 minutes with the train) and in Cascais (30
minutes with the train).
We also went to Lagos in Algarve one weekend. We did it in September when the
weather is still good. This was a really nice place with friendly people, good restaurants
and beautiful beaches, where you should absolutely go.
Other students went to Porto and Madeira, but we did not have the time.