Monday, July 14th was the first day of the application process for the various post graduate programs at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. In this context, the University has launched a series of innovations and is introducing a new master’s degree in Theology, under the care of the Ecclesiastical School of Theology.
The PUCV has a broad available academic offer that includes 20 doctoral and 43 master’s programs, with 17 academic and 26 professional programs in various fields of knowledge, including Science, Engineering, Architecture, Humanities, Business Administration, Renewable Energies, Leadership, International Relations, and Food Science, among many others. In this way, the PUCV consolidates itself as the higher education institution with most post-graduate programs in the Valparaíso region.
In that regard, Claudia Mejías, Academic Vicerector, highlighted the fact that choosing a post-graduate program at the PUCV over other institutions makes a difference, since we cover various fields of knowledge, and work with renown researchers that hold doctoral degrees.
“I can highlight the ample formative offer that provides educational trajectories that facilitate leadership spaces for research and innovation. The lines of investigation that our academic programs offer are highly attractive for those who desire to study under the care of consolidated research groups. In turn, our professional master’s programs include the need to solve critical professional nodes in their designs, as well as the importance of providing tools that will later allow the generation of creative, innovative and appropriate solutions in their professional field”, she indicated.
As part of the novelties for 2026, the University will offer a new Master of Theology program, the first one in charge of the Ecclesiastical School of Theology. This program will address various training aspects from an ecclesial identity, contributing to current world challenges and evangelization.
In addition, our Master of Applied Linguistics and Master of Architecture and Design were recently accredited for four years, while our Intelligent Industry Doctoral program was accredited for two years.
In order to facilitate the application to scholarships from the National Research and Development Agency (ANID for its name in spanish), this year the dates for applying to doctoral and master’s programs have been adjusted. Along this line, the PUCV received 62 ANID grantees for doctoral programs, from a total of 351 at the national level.
As a relevant milestone, this year the gender equality scholarship was awarded for the first time, which covered the tuition of 15 post-graduate students. During the second semester new calls will be made to participate in scientific events and gender-perspective training programs.
Free language courses and publication workshops
Among the recent initiatives, free english courses have been incorporated in charge of the English as Foreign Language Program (PILE, for its name in spanish) from the Academic Vice rectory, considering that English is the worldwide lingua franca and a fundamental requirement for students to develop internationally. In this sense, director of Academic Post Graduate programs, María Isabel González, added that the initiative was created because some programs established a high english entry-level requirement, and as a response to this four english courses aimed at doctoral and masters’ students were implemented, and offered free of charge.
During the second semester, six additional academic english courses will be offered. One of them will be especially oriented towards doctoral and master’s programs in the STEM field, which corresponds to the Sciences and Engineering schools, and will incorporate scientific writing modules focused on writing articles for publication on indexed journals. A joint course, together with the Statistics Institute, was added this year, with a focus on advanced Quantitative methodologies and technological tools.
“In collaboration with the Library System, workshops on active information search in databases such as Scopus, academic writing, use of artificial intelligence to identify key concepts, bibliographic management, among other relevant topics, have been incorporated. The initiative has met with great reception: during 2025, 145 post graduate students have participated – 82 from doctoral and 63 from master’s programs – from different disciplines such as Engineering, education sciences, Humanities and law”, González said.
Another improvement in the post-graduate ecosystem corresponds to the benefits available through Student Affairs, which include social assistance, online medicine, nutritional orientation, psychiatric support, among other services. During 2025, a total of 64 post-graduate students made use of these benefits. In addition, we offer spiritual support from the PUCV Pastoral department and the possibility to join volunteer programs.
Finally, collaboration between the Postgraduate Direction and the General Direction of Student Affairs has been strengthened, which facilitates the management of visas and insurance for foreign students that arrive at our university.
For more information about the programs: https://www.postgradospucv.cl/
By Juan Paulo Roldán
Strategic Communications Department
