University of Alcala de Henares
Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (UAH) is located in the historic city of Alcalá de Henares, 30 kilometers from Madrid, the University has 28,000 students, 2,000 teaching and research staff and 800 service and administration staff. Its four campuses –the Historic, the Science and Technology, the Guadalajara Campuses, and the most recent, the Torrejón de Ardoz Campus— play home to 44 undergraduate degree programs, 85 official postgraduate programs and a broad offer of lifelong training courses in all fields of knowledge.
At one and the same time historic and avant-garde, UAH is one of Europe’s most venerable universities and can trace its origin as far back as 1293 and the medieval Studia generalia. In 1499, Cardinal Cisneros, Regent of Spain, founded the College of St Hildephonse with a view to creating a prototype university city which would act as a model for others in Ibero-America. The success of this undertaking made Alcalá into the seat of a university aristocracy that made Spain's Golden Age possible. Among its most illustrious students it boasts figures such as Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Francisco de Quevedo, Tirso de Molina, Fray Luis de León, Ignacio de Loyola or Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, as well as María Isidra de Guzmán -the first woman in Spain to obtain a doctoral degree.
After the institution was moved to Madrid in the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the expropriation of Church lands, the ambition to restore the University was kept alive by the Condueños Society. The spirit of Alcalá's residents, the prestige of its past, the recovery of its historical memory and the fresh impetus that education received during Spain's transition to democracy in 1977 made it possible for Universidad de Alcalá to reopen its classrooms. Since then, the collective effort and determination of its administrators championed the recovery of its intellectual, cultural and architectural heritage, which led to its declaration as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1998.
Today, Universidad de Alcalá is a public university with a commitment to teaching and research excellence, which it delivers by adapting its training provision to social change and social demands and by attracting and retaining talent. Its numbers among its priorities the fomenting of student employability; the implementation of socially responsible policies which strengthen its reputation as an open, integrating and committed institution; and the development of efficient, responsible and transparent management based on its accountability to the institution itself and to society.
UAH is also a world benchmark for the teaching of Spanish language and culture, its social commitment and the defense of human rights. Not for nothing is its historic Paraninfo or assembly hall the stage for award ceremonies of the stature of the Cervantes Prize for Literature in Spanish, the King of Spain’s Human Rights Prize, or the “Camino Real” award.
