The University of Mexico, 2009 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities

Today in Oviedo, the jury for the 2009 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities has decided to bestow the prize to the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The jury considers that “throughout the hundred years of its existence, the National Autonomous University of Mexico has been the academic and educational model for numerous generations of students from diverse countries and has provided the Ibero-American sphere with the most eminent intellectuals and scientists.”

The UNAM was established in 1910 as a centre for higher education. In 1929, as a result of internal social reform, the federal Government granted the university its still-current autonomous status, resulting in its present-day name of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

3 Nobel Prize winners have studied at the UNAM, as well as 8 of the 10 Mexican Prince of Asturias Award Laureates. Its main campus in Mexico City, which was inaugurated in 1954, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 for being an example of a modernist monumental complex of the 20th century.

The UNAM has a total of 18 faculties and 4 university schools, as well as 46 institutes and research centres throughout Mexico. It also has foreign campuses in the United States and Canada. The current academic year has a total of 299,688 registered students and 34,835 researchers and teachers.

The Presentation Ceremony will take place in the autumn in Oviedo and it will be presided over by the Prince of Asturias.

Filed under Spain
Tagged Education, Mexico, Princess of Asturias Awards.