PET
Tutorial Education Program in Social Sciences – USP (PET/Social Sciences-USP)
Funded by the Ministry of Education and the National Fund for the Development of Education, the PET/Social Sciences-USP was created in 1995. It gathers, under the supervision of a university professor, twelve scholarship students and a potential group of volunteer undergraduate students from all knowledge areas for teaching, research, and university extension activities. Unlike Scientific Initiation programs, which focus on individual research, the PET promotes, by definition, collective work. Integration among different groups is also an objective, which involves the participation of PET/Social Sciences- USP in PET group meetings in different states of the country throughout the year.
At USP, the PET has a central administration, the Local Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (CLAA), in addition to the regular Tutors' Meeting, which aims to integrate all 22 PET groups at USP and intensify the articulation of PET activities to the access and permanence policies implemented by the Office of Undergraduate Studies.
The PET/Social Sciences has lately focused on teaching all of the procedures that make up the research activity. From 2003 to 2008, under the tutelage of Sylvia Gemignani Garcia and Alvaro Comin, the PET performed a collective research titled “University Youth and Political Participation: The Case of the FFLCH Student Strike in 2002" and "Between the University and the Labor Market: Training, Employment and Careers among R&D Professionals in São Paulo Companies.” From 2009 to 2012, the PET was under the tutorship of Márcia Lima and Gustavo Venturi, and, between 2012 and 2018, solely under the supervision of the latter. In both periods, the Program developed the research titled “Profile of USP Social Science graduates (2006-2019).” Between 2016 and 2018, it also provided support to the “LAPS/PET-CS Electoral Survey Workshops”, which were also held within the Social Research Laboratory of the Sociology Department, and open to other undergraduate and graduate students at FFLCH.
Currently under the tutelage of Sylvia Gemignani Garcia, Gustavo Venturi, and Bruna Gisi de Almeida, the PET/Social Sciences has continued the research titled “Profile of first year university students in Social Sciences at USP”.
The research results have been presented mostly at local, regional, and national PET meetings, research communications at the USP International Scientific Initiation Symposium (Siicusp), and the PET Debate, an annual activity promoted by the PET/Social Sciences within the scope of the USP Social Sciences course.
In collaboration with other PET groups from the many areas of Human Sciences at USP, the PET/Social Sciences also participates in organizing the Humanidades em Diálogo, a digital publication for articles by undergraduate students and the dissemination of relevant debates in the field by way of interviews with renowned researchers.