Undergraduate engineering students at PUC-Rio are required to complete 10 credits of Complementary Activities. Among these activities we can highlight:
- Scientific research projects through Scientific Initiation grants;
- Projects coordinated by professors with funding from research funding agencies or companies;
- Supervised internships
- Competition teams: construction of mini-Baja and Formula SAE cars, aerodesign, RioBotz, Pégasus, among others;
The objective of these various activities is to increase student motivation, maximizing learning in several important areas of Mechanical Engineering and better preparing them for the job market. The benefit of student participation in the Department’s activities can be exemplified by the preference of companies to hire students with experience on competition teams. The Department of Mechanical Engineering has extensive relationships with national and international industry, due to the research projects it maintains with a large number of companies. There are also several service provision projects. Students in their final period have the possibility of carrying out a full-time internship in companies partnered with the Department during an elective semester. The full-time internship allows the student to be exposed to the work carried out in renowned engineering companies, even those located outside the city of Rio de Janeiro, a practice that is unfeasible in a conventional part-time internship.
The Department also actively participates in teaching, research and development activities related to the oil industry, responsible for the industrial growth of the State of Rio de Janeiro well above the Brazilian average. In addition to the projects mentioned, DEM students compete for scholarships provided by the National Petroleum Agency.
The complete regulation on Complementary Activities can be seen at