The University of Macau (UM) has been elected the next president of the Association of Portuguese Speaking Universities (Associação das Universidades de Lrngua Portuguesa, AULP), becoming the first higher education institution in Macao to be elected to this position.

UM was unanimously elected as the AULP’s next president for a three-year term from 2014 to 2017 at the AULP’s General Assembly, which was attended by over 200 AULP members from Portuguese-speaking countries and regions. At the General Assembly ALUP members praised the quality of this year’s annual meeting as well as the efforts that UM, Macao Polytechnic Institute (IPM), and the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) have put into organising the meeting.

AULP President Prof Jorge Ferrão noted UM has made great contributions to the AULP, having hosted five annual meetings, in 1998, 2003, 2006, 2010, and 2014, and having served as the Board of Administrators’s vice president for Asia-Pacific for over nine years. Prof Jorge Ferrão expressed confidence that AULP will continue to make good progress under the leadership of UM.

Newly elected vice presidents of the AULP are Universidade Lúrio, Mozambique; Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Universidade Mandume Ya Ndemufayo, Angola.

The AULP is an international academic organisation. Its members come from more than 200 higher education institutions in different countries and regions, including Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, and Macao. Institutions that enjoy provisional membership status include Portuguese departments at universities in the United States, France and Italy. Currently there six institutions in Macao that are AULP members. They are UM, IPM, IFT, the International Institute of Macau, the University of Saint Joseph, and the Asia International Open University (Macau).

The 25th annual meeting of the AULP will be held at the University of Cabo Verde in July 2015.