Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education
Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, also known as the Technological Institute of Monterrey or simply Tec, is a private research university based in Monterrey, Mexico. It has expanded to include 35 campuses across 25 cities in the country and 22 liaison offices in 15 other countries.
The university was founded in 1943 by Eugenio Garza Sada, who was educated at MIT in the United States. Eugenio Garza Sada was an industrialist and philanthropist from Monterrey.
ITESM was the first university outside the U.S. to establish an internet connection in the Western Hemisphere, linking the University of Texas at San Antonio directly.
History
Early years
The institute was founded on September 6, 1943, by a group of local businessmen led by Eugenio Garza Sada, a moneyed heir of a brewing conglomerate who was interested in creating an institution that could provide highly skilled personnel — both university graduates and technicians— to the booming Monterrey corporations of the 1940s. The group was structured into a non-profit organization called Enseñanza e Investigación Superior A.C. and recruited several academicians led by León Ávalos y Vez, an MIT alumnus and then director-general of the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering of the National Polytechnic Institute, who designed its first academic programs and served as its first director-general.In its early years the Institute operated at Abasolo 858 Oriente in a large, two-story house located a block and a half away from Zaragoza Square, behind the city's Metropolitan Cathedral. As these facilities soon proved to be insufficient, it started renting out adjacent buildings and by 1945 it became apparent that a university campus was necessary. For that reason, a master plan was commissioned to Enrique de la Mora and on February 3, 1947, what would later be known as its Monterrey Campus was inaugurated by Mexican President Miguel Alemán Valdés.
Because the operations of the local companies were highly reliant on U.S. markets, investments, and technology; internationalization became one of its earliest priorities. In 1950 it became the first foreign university in history to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, one of the six regional accreditation agencies recognized by the United States Department of Education. Its foreign accreditation would end up being a decisive influence in its development, as it was forced to submit itself to external evaluation earlier than most Mexican universities and unlocked additional sources of revenue, such as tuition funds from foreign students interested in taking summer courses in Mexico for full-academic credit.
Expansion
Its growth outside the city of Monterrey began in the late-1960s, when both its rector and head of academics lobbied for expansion. A first attempt, funded a few years earlier by several businessmen from Mexicali, Baja California, was staffed and organized by the Institute but faced opposition from the Board of Trustees once the federal government refused any additional subsidy and members of the Board cast doubt on its ability to get funds as an out-of-state university. At the end the project was renamed Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior and grew into a fully independent institution.Aside from the CETYS experiment and the 150 hectares bought in 1951 for the agricultural program's experimental facilities in nearby Apodaca, Nuevo León, no other expansion outside Monterrey was attempted until 1967, when a school of maritime studies was built in the port of Guaymas, Sonora. Shortly thereafter, premises were built in Obregón and courses began to be offered in Mexico City. Those premises and the ones that followed, then called external units, were fully dependent on the Monterrey Campus until 1984, when they were restructured as semi-independent campuses and reorganized in regional rectorates.
In 1987, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools demanded faculty members with master's degrees to lecture 100% of its undergraduate courses, the Institute invested considerably in both distance learning and computer network technologies and training, effectively becoming, on February 1, 1989, the first university ever connected to the Internet in both Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. Such efforts contributed to the creation of its former Virtual University a few years later and allowed it to become the first country-code top level domain registry in Mexico; first by itself from 1989 to 1995, and then as a major shareholder of NIC Mexico, the current national registry.
Campuses
There are thirty-one campuses of the Institute distributed in twenty-five Mexican cities. Each campus is relatively independent but shares a national academic curriculum. The flagship campus is located in Monterrey, where the national, system-wide rectorate is located. Most of them deliver both high school and undergraduate education, some offer postgraduate programs and only eight deliver high school courses exclusively. Nevertheless, curricular and extension courses and seminars are usually available at most facilities.Campuses by region
Former campuses include Celaya, Veracruz, Guaymas and Mazatlán.- North: Monterrey, PrepaTec Cumbres, PrepaTec Eugenio Garza Lagüera, PrepaTec Eugenio Garza Sada, Prepa Tec Santa Catarina, PrepaTec Valle Alto, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Ciudad Juárez, Laguna, Saltillo, Tampico and Zacatecas.
- Centro: , Santa Fe, State of Mexico, PrepaTec Esmeralda, Toluca
- South: Chiapas, Cuernavaca, Hidalgo, PrepaTec Metepec, Puebla
- West: Colima, Guadalajara, Irapuato, León, Morelia, PrepaTec Navojoa, Northern Sonora, Obregón, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, PrepaTec Santa Anita and Sinaloa.
Other infrastructure
In addition to the campuses, the Institute manages:- The Ignacio A. Santos Medical School, the Hospital San José and the Zambrano-Hellion Medical Center.
- Eight international sites in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and the United States offering extension courses, research and international consulting.
- Fifteen liaison offices in charge of forging international partnerships and negotiating professional internships and academic exchanges with local universities, companies and civil institutions. Current liaison offices are located in Belgium, Canada, China, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and the United States
Organization
Former heads of the Institute include:
- León Ávalos y Vez first director-general.
- Roberto Guajardo Suárez second director-general.
- Víctor Bravo Ahuja third director-general, and from April 11, 1955, first rector.
- Fernando García Roel second rector.
- Rafael Rangel Sostmann third rector.
- Salvador Alva fourth rector and Executive President.
High schools
Following the historical trend of Mexico's largest universities, the Institute sponsors several high schools which are united under the name "HighPoint International School". This high schools share one or more national curricula: bicultural, multicultural and/or International Baccalaureate, which is administered from Geneva, Switzerland. The bicultural focuses on better understanding of the English language, the multicultural program requires studying a third language and to have an exchange program abroad. Finally, the IB is an academically challenging program where students can obtain the IB Diploma when they graduate. Additionally, students can receive college credits both at the TEC and universities abroad. Multicultural students are able to take IB courses if they wish with the focus on obtaining IB Subject Certificates., over 26,000 students in several campuses were registered as high school students within the system.Academics
Academically, the university is organized into several departments and divisions —as opposed to the traditional faculty school scheme used by most Mexican public universities— and it was the first Mexican university in history to divide the academic year in semesters. Current academic calendar for both high school and undergraduate students is composed of two semesters running from August to December and from January to May and an optional summer session from June to July, where at most two courses can be taken in an intensive basis., the institute offers 57 undergraduate degrees, of which 37 are taught in English and are generally awarded after nine semesters of study ; 33 master's degrees, generally lasting three to five semesters, and 11 doctorate degrees varying in length according to their academic field.