Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ

Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (informally Universidad San Francisco de Quito or simply USFQ ) is a liberal-arts, non-profit, private university located in Quito, Ecuador. It was the first totally-private self-financed university in Ecuador and the first liberal-arts institution in the Andean region. It is an institution that promotes the quest for knowledge, individual liberties, and the entrepreneurial spirit as a means for the development of Ecuadorian society through excellence in teaching and research, supported by qualified and committed faculty, comprehensive and rigorous curricula, and adequate resources .
Goodness, beauty, and truth are the guiding principles under which the university was created. USFQ students shall have instilled in them a passion for learning, love for justice, and the need for freedom in order to be citizens of the world objectively celebrating differences and strongly promoting free enterprise as a means for a better future.
Academically, USFQ ranks as one of the eleven-top universities (category A) in the most recently published ranking of Ecuadorian universities (being the only totally-private university to qualify for the highest category), issued by the Ecuadorian Council of Evaluation and Accreditation of High Education (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación de la Educación Superior CONEA) . In 2009, it was ranked first in Ecuador in relation to the number of peer-reviewed scientific publications.
The university now enrolls 5,500 students, 4,500 of whom are undergraduates. The university promotes multicultural diversity, and each year about 100 indigenous students and 1000 international students participate in USFQ academic programs. USFQ has developed a scholarship program for indigenous students, offering full schollarships to the best students of public highschools throughout Ecuador. Although USFQ receives no funding from the government of Ecuador, its faculty comprise one-half of all the people in that nation who hold a doctorate.
USFQ main campus is located in Cumbayá, outside of Quito (capital city of Ecuador), where students enjoy of a modern library, education and research laboratories, classrooms, and seven-themed restaurants. USFQ is the only university in the world that owns a campus in the Galapagos Islands, one of Earth''''s most amazing natural laboratories, and a campus in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve (Tiputini Biodiversity Station), one of Earth''''s most biodiverse area