El Colegio de México

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El Colegio de México, A.C. (commonly known as Colmex, English: The College of Mexico) is a Mexican institute of higher education, specializing in teaching and research in social sciences and humanities.

El Colegio de México
TypePublic
EstablishedOctober 8, 1940
EndowmentUS $47.46 million (2011)[1]
PresidentSilvia Giorguli Saucedo
Academic staff
178[2]
Students440
Undergraduates110
Postgraduates330
Location,
19°18′14″N 99°12′28″W / 19.30389°N 99.20778°W / 19.30389; -99.20778
CampusUrban
ColorsCrimson  
WebsiteColmex.mx

The college was founded in 1940 by the Mexican Federal Government, the Bank of Mexico (Banco de México), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the Fondo de Cultura Económica. In the late 1930s, following the end of the Spanish Civil War, Mexican president Lázaro Cardenas created the House of Spain in Mexico (1938–1940) to host Spanish intellectuals in exile in Mexico; Mexico was the only country that in 1939 welcomed Spanish refugees. Under the direction of intellectual Alfonso Reyes, the House of Spain became a higher education center, and was renamed El Colegio de México in 1940. The College now operates under a 1961 charter that allows the institution to provide college-level teaching in the fields of humanistic knowledge and social and political sciences. In 1976, the university's campus was moved from the Colonia Roma (a historic neighborhood just west of the city's center) to its current location in the southern portion of the capital; the main building of the campus was designed by the Mexican architect Teodoro González de León.[3] The college contains seven separate academic centers collectively offering three undergraduate degrees, seven master's degrees and eight doctoral degrees.

El Colegio de México received the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences in 2001. Colmex's library (Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas), one of the largest academic libraries in Mexico, contains one of the most important Latin American collections in the fields of the social sciences and humanities.[4]

History

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Colmex arose from an organization of Spanish civil war exiles called "Casa de España en México" (House of Spain in Mexico). In March 1939, Lázaro Cárdenas named Alfonso Reyes to the presidency of the "Casa de España en México". Reyes would be president of the "Colegio" until his death. Historian Daniel Cosío Villegas played an important role in its institutionalization and the Colegio's library bears his name.

Academics

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Students

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Demographics of El Colegio de México[5]
Undergraduate Graduate Ph.D.
Men 57% 49% 44%
Women 43% 51% 56%
International Students 4% 12% 30%

Colmex's student population includes 74 undergraduate and 369 graduate students representing diverse geographic and linguistic backgrounds. Of the entire student population, 83.5% are from Mexico, while 16.05% are from outside the country (including the United States, France, Italy and China). International students hail from about 24 different countries, with Colombians comprising about one third of all international students in the entering class of 2011.[6]

Undergraduate and graduate admission to Colmex is very selective.[6] El Colegio de México received 936 applications for admission to the Class of 2014 and 181 were admitted (18.1%). 87% of students graduate within 4 years.[6]

Research Centers

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The college at night.

In the 2010–2011 school year, El Colegio de México offered 19 academic programs in seven academic centers, of which 16 are doctoral and master's graduate degree programs.[7] Despite strong increases in university enrollment across Mexico,[8] El Colegio de México has upheld a student-faculty ratio of 2.5:1. There are nearly 181 tenured or tenure-track professors and 50 adjunct and visiting professors teaching at the college.[6]

21% of all students are enrolled in the Centre for International Studies, Colmex's largest academic unit. Of the other larger centers, the Centre for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies enrolls 19%, the Centre for Historical Studies enrolls 15%, the Centre for Linguistic and Literary Studies enrolls 13%, the Centre for Economic Studies and the Centre for Sociological Studies enroll about 10% each.[9] The remainder of all students are enrolled in Colmex's smaller schools, including the Centre of Asian and African Studies, founded by Flora Botton;[10][11] the Gender Studies Program, founded by Lourdes Arizpe, Botton, and Elena Urrutia;[12] and the Daniel Cosío Villegas Library, which is also one of the richest libraries in North America, with sources in many languages.

Since 1991, El Colegio de México is the host institution of LEAD-Mexico (Leadership for Environment and Development), a program established by The Rockefeller Foundation to bring together and train mid-career leaders from all parts of the world in improving their leadership skills around the issues of sustainable development . Led primarily by renowned Colmex professor Boris Graizbord, Lead Mexico responds to calls for acting as consultant, advisor, and policy evaluator at federal and local level.[13]

In 2021 a Centre for Gender Studies was inaugurated.[14]

Centers of El Colegio de México[1]
  • Centre for Historical Studies
  • Centre for Linguistic and Literary Studies
  • Centre for Studies of Asia and Africa
  • Centre for Economic Studies
  • Centre for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies
  • Centre for International Studies
  • Centre for Sociological Studies
  • Centre for Gender Studies
  • Daniel Cosío Villegas Library

Exchange and cooperation arrangements (2021)

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Canada

United States

Korea

India

Israel

Japan

Germany

Netherlands

United Kingdom

Switzerland

Daniel Cosío Villegas Library

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The Daniel Cosío Villegas Library is a public academic library situated in the center of El Colegio de México's campus, contains around 700,000 volumes, and comprises 30% of the total building real estate.[15] The library is composed of eighteen academic librarians, three IT professionals, and eighty clerical staff and paraprofessionals.[15] The library's curatorial efforts have transformed the collection into one of the most important Latin America collections in its areas of specialty and its staff has played an important role both for the campus and the national academic library practices by driving various initiatives such as the migration to online OPAC systems in the 90's, which spurred other institutions in Mexico to follow.[15]

Notable people

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Presidents of El Colegio de México
Alfonso Reyes 1940–1958
Daniel Cosío Villegas 1958–1963
Silvio Zavala 1963–1966
Víctor Luis Urquidi Bingham 1966–1985
Mario Ojeda Gómez 1985–1994
Andrés Lira 1994–2005
Francisco Javier Garciadiego Dantán 2005–2015
Silvia Giorguli Saucedo 2015–present

Faculty and staff

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Prominent scholars and intellectuals have been among the faculty of the various centers, such as Alfonso Reyes, Daniel Cosío Villegas, Silvio Zavala, Mario Ojeda Gómez, Raimundo Lida, José Gaos, Víctor Urquidi, Luis González y González, Luis Unikel and Rafael Segovia Canosa.

For 2020, from a total of 173 faculty and staff members, 91% were affiliated with the National System of Researchers (abbreviated as SNI, in Spanish) of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico).[16]

Among the best-known faculty of El Colegio de México are Lorenzo Meyer, Mauricio Merino, Antonio Alatorre; political leaders Jesús Silva Herzog Flores, Carlos Tello Macías, Manuel Camacho Solís, Natividad González Parás, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Bernardo Sepúlveda, José Ramón Cossío; scholars Sergio Aguayo, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, Carlos Marichal, Clara Lida, Carlos Urzúa, Soledad Loaeza, Jacqueline Peschard, Brígida García Guzmán, Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo, David Lorenzen, Jorge Alberto Lozoya, Gabriela Cano Ortega, Ruy Mauro Marini, José Luis Lezama, Orlandina de Oliveira, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Luis F. Aguilar Villanueva, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Francisco Gil Villegas, Margit Frenk, Francisco Segovia, Saurabh Dube, Joseph Hodara, Gustavo Garza, Robert Pastor, Martha Schteingart; and diplomats such as Mauricio de María y Campos and Fernando de Mateo.[citation needed]

Alumni

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Among the people who have attended El Colegio de México are Mexican political leaders Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, former Head of Government of Mexico City; economist Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez cabinet member under the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration; economist Graciela Márquez Colín former Secretary of Economy, under the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration; economist Jaime Serra Puche, cabinet member under the Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo administrations; Jesús Seade Andrés Manuel López Obrador's representative in the renegotiation of NAFTA; Sócrates Rizzo, former Governor of Nuevo León, Marco Antonio Mena Rodríguez Governor of Tlaxcala and Enrique Alfaro Ramírez Governor of Jalisco.

Diplomats: Patricia Espinosa, executive director of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, former Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Arturo Sarukhán, former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Enrique Berruga, former Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations; Claude Heller, ambassador of Mexico to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zínser, former ambassador of Mexico to the UN Security Council, senator Rosario Green, Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the Zedillo administration, Bruno Figueroa Fischer Ambassador or Mexico to the Republic of Korea.

Intellectuals and academics: historians Enrique Krauze, Andrés Reséndez; and Javier Garciadiego member of El Colegio Nacional (Mexico) and director of Academia Mexicana de la Historia; sociologist Julio Boltvinik and Pablo González Casanova rector at Autonomous National University of Mexico; writers such as Pablo Soler Frost, Silvio Zavala, Héctor Aguilar Camín, and Margarita Peña; Secretary of State of the Mexican State of Nuevo León and former Senior Vice President of Cemex Javier Trevino; economists Gustavo Garza Villarreal; political scientists Soledad Loaeza and Francisco Gil Villegas; political analyst and writer Denise Dresser; current president of Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland, Janet Dudley-Eshbach; and narratologist Lauro Zavala.

References

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  1. ^ "SHCP El Colegio de México, Portal de transparencia" (PDF). IFAI. Retrieved July 30, 2012.
  2. ^ "El Colegio de México, Informe de actividades 2016" (PDF). COLMEX. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  3. ^ "Historia de El Colegio de México". El Colegio de México. Archived from the original on April 13, 2016. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  4. ^ "Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas". El Colegio de México. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  5. ^ "Informe Anual de actividades: 2010". El Colegio de México. Archived from the original on April 15, 2012. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  6. ^ a b c d "Informes de actividades". El Colegio de México. Archived from the original on 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2012-09-23.
  7. ^ "Programas académicos". El Colegio de México. Archived from the original on 2012-09-19. Retrieved 2012-09-23.
  8. ^ "Crece matrícula de universidades: SEP". El Universal. Retrieved 2012-09-23.[permanent dead link]
  9. ^ "Informe académico 2011" (PDF). El Colegio de México. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-09-19. Retrieved 2012-09-23.
  10. ^ Bermejo Mora, Edgardo (26 October 2019). "Flora Botton y China" [Flora Botton and China]. La Crónica de Hoy (in Spanish). Mexico City, Mexico. Archived from the original on 25 March 2022. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
  11. ^ Cornejo, Romer (2012). "Introducción". In Cornejo, Romer (ed.). China: estudios y ensayos en honor de Flora Botton Beja [China: Studies and Essays in Honor of Flora Botton Beja] (in Spanish) (Primeraición ed.). Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México. pp. i–xi. ISBN 978-607-462-346-8.
  12. ^ Poy Solano, Laura (11 March 2021). "Reconoce el Colmex a tres pioneras de los estudios de género" [Colmex Recognizes Three Pioneers of Gender Studies]. La Jornada (in Spanish). Mexico City, Mexico. Archived from the original on 11 March 2021. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
  13. ^ "Lead-Mexico" (PDF). Lead Mexico. Retrieved 2012-09-23.
  14. ^ "El Colmex hará realidad su Centro de Estudios de Género". El Economista. June 8, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2023.
  15. ^ a b c Martínez, Alberto Santiago. «Constructing a Model for Mexican Libraries in the 21st Century». En Dynamic Research Support in Academic Libraries. Facet Publishing, 2016.
  16. ^ El Colegio de México. ""Informe de Actividades, 2020"" (PDF). colmex.mx. Colmex. Retrieved 1 July 2021.

Publications

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