The Autonomous University of Yucatan is 97 years old and today more than 25,000 young people study in baccalaureate, undergraduate and postgraduate education programs.
Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal presided on Monday Feb. 25th, the ceremony of a floral offering before the statue of Felipe Carrillo Puerto on the occasion of the XCVII (97th) anniversary of the foundation of the Autonomous University of Yucatan.
The event took place in the Campus of Social Sciences and Humanities located at Km. 1 Carretera Mérida-Tizimín, at nine in the morning. Afterwards, at 10 a.m., there was a solemn session of the Eighteenth University Council in the Salvador Rodríguez Losa auditorium at the school of Anthropological Sciences.
Felipe Carrillo Puerto. (1874 – 1924)
In the year of 1918 Felipe Carrillo Puerto, was trying to crystallize a project: higher education for those who had no access to university education, which he lacked. That was how he announced his intention to create the Yucatecan University, and it is precisely in that year, 1918 with the help of congressmen Arturo Sales Díaz and Héctor Victoria, when he presents the initiative to Legislative power that approves it on March 27, 1918.
Governor Carlos Castro Morales, denies its promulgation and publication in the Official Gazette of the State of Yucatan. Carrillo Puerto does not give in his struggle, his beliefs and ideology in what he wanted for Yucatan. Four years later, his project would become a reality. On February 25, 1922, the “National University of the Southeast” as it was first named, was founded on the initiative of the then governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
On November 5, 1938, the State Congress changed the name from “National University of the Southeast” to the University of Yucatan” and on September 1, 1984, the autonomy regime became effective.
The first schools were those of Jurisprudence, Medicine, Engineering, Literary Institute and Music and Arts. Its first rector was Dr. Eduardo Urzaiz Rodríguez and its initial enrollment was 1,737 students.
The institution has evolved significantly over the years, including a process of integration of its schools in five campuses according to the following academic areas.
- Social Sciences
- Economic Administrative and Humanities
- Exact Sciences and Engineering
- Health Sciences
- Biological and Agricultural Sciences
- Architecture, Habitat, Art and Design
Currently the Autonomous University of Yucatan, has an enrollment of more than 25 thousand students in the baccalaureate, bachelor and postgraduate levels, attended by more than 1,500 professors.
The Yucatan Times
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