The institution has had several names and different roles since its foundation in 1852:
1852 The Escola Industrial do Porto is founded by the minister Fontes Pereira de Melo, during the reign of King Pedro V of Portugal.
1864 The school was transformed into an Institute, as Instituto Industrial do Porto, and was integrated into the new Industrial sector on the frame of the Instituto Industrial de Lisboa established in Lisbon.
1918 The institute was reorganized and transformed again into a non-higher education technical institute of intermediate education by the minister Azevedo Neves reforms. It started coferring the titles of engenheiro auxiliar by law Lei 1 638 de 23 de Julho de 1924 in 1924, and agente técnico de engenharia from 1926 onwards.
1975 After the Carnation Revolution of 1974, the institute was upgraded to higher education status and started to award 4-year bacharelato degrees conferring the title of technical engineer. Integrated into the university sector and renamed ISEP - Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, it conferred technical engineering degrees while the universities awarded 5-year engineering degrees.
1989 By force of law Decreto-Lei n.º 389/88, de 25 de Outubro, ISEP was integrated into the newly created polytechnic sector and made part of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. It started to award exclusively 3-year bacharelato degrees conferring the title of technical engineer and CESE courses conferring the DESE diploma, a complementary diploma to the bacharelato degree.
1998 ISEP started to award licenciatura bietápica degrees.
2004 ISEP seen its first engineering licenciatura courses accredited by the Ordem dos Engenheiros, the Portuguese engineering association. The first accredited courses were in chemical engineering and electronic engineering. Beyond the public universities, only Lisbon and Porto state-run polytechnic engineering institutions had accredited courses in the Ordem dos Engenheiros in 2006.
2007 Like the other Portuguese polytechnic institutions, on the frame of the Bologna process, ISEP was allowed to start awarding independent masters' degrees as a second cycle of study after the initial 3-year first cycle which grant a licenciatura. Previously, since 2002, it only awarded master's degrees in some fields with the support of Instituto Superior Técnico a university engineering institution from Lisbon.
2017 ISEP's Msc in Informatics Engineering is the first master's degree program in Portugal accredited by the United States-based ABET, assigned to the Engineering Accreditation Commission, a trusted accreditation for employers worldwide attesting that graduates are prepared to enter the workforce as licensed professional engineers.
Campus
ISEP's campus spans approximately 50,000 square meters in Pólo Universitário, near São João Hospital. Dormitories and some of student life facilities are located outside the campus, but almost all classes are held on campus. ISEP campus was initially located in the central Porto and moved to current one in the 1960s.
Departments
ISEP is divided into different schools within its campus:
