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.
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 architectTeodoro 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
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.
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
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]
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]
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]
^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.
^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. ISBN978-607-462-346-8.
^ abcMartínez, Alberto Santiago. «Constructing a Model for Mexican Libraries in the 21st Century». En Dynamic Research Support in Academic Libraries. Facet Publishing, 2016.
