CentralUniversity of Venezuela. Located in the University City of Caracas, it maintains a student enrollment of approximately 54,222 undergraduate students and 8,317 postgraduate students, with 8,601 teachers of which 3,811 are retired; 8,372 professional employees: administrative 3,858 are retired, and 2,883 workers of them 1,679 are retired, distributed in 9 Faculties in Caracas, 2 Faculties in Maracay, 5 Nuclei of supervised studies and 12 Experimental Stations in different regions of the country.
History
The history of the University begins with the founding of the Colegio Santa Rosa de Lima by Antonio González de Acuña in 1673, which was inaugurated on August 29, 1696 by Diego Baños Sotomayor. Currently this enclosure serves as the Municipal Palace of Caracas.
The 22 of December of 1721, after many efforts by Venezuelans, the King Felipe V granted the power to award degrees Seminar by Royal Decree and the 18 of December of 1722 the Pope Innocent XIII granted Pontifical character.
Initially, classes in theology, medicine, philosophy and law were taught, all of them in Latin, but eventually the academic regime became independent from the seminary and on August 11, 1725, the Bishop of Caracas Juan José de Escalona y Calatayud (who had managed the creation of the institute), installs the Royal and Pontifical Seminary of the Santa Rosa de Lima University in Santiago de León del Valle Caracas. Its first rector was the priest Francisco Martínez de Porras and until 1810 , date in which the Seminary of San Buenaventura de Mérida was elevated to University (current University of Los Andes), the one in Caracas was the only one in the country. The University was called Royal and Pontifical, because it was under the tutelage and protection of the Monarch and the Supreme Pontiff. To be admitted as a student of the university, it was required to present a testimony of “vista et moribus”, that is, a detailed account of “life and good customs”.
At the end of the 18th century, the University of Caracas began to “dress modernly”, thanks to the rector Baltasar de los Reyes Marreros who began teaching the rationalist philosophy of Locke, Newton, Leibnitz, Descartes and other philosophers, which concluded with the rejection of the postulates of the works of Aristotle, Santo Tomás, Justiniano and Hipócatres, and becoming a seedbed of Independence. Consequently, between 1814 and 1821, the Spanish university authorities, prohibited the teaching of modern currents of thought and unleashed a persecution against the supporters of independence. With the defeat of Spain in the War of Independence, the university went from Royal to Republican and its first academic and institutional modernization began.
The Republican University
On 24 June as as 1827, during his last visit to Caracas, Simon Bolivar, along with José María Vargas and Jose Rafael Revenga they write the Republican statutes of the University of Caracas, which endow it with full autonomy, secular character, income and democracy. Said rents were to serve as financial support for the institution and consisted of properties donated by Bolívar such as the Chuao, Cata and Tácata estates. These new norms broaden the educational vision by incorporating new chairs and laboratories, eliminate the obnoxious procedure of selecting students by skin color, lower the cost of university degrees, increase the salary of professors, and abolish Latin as the official language of teaching and endow the University with an immense economic patrimony, represented in lands and farms.
With these new regulations, the Real y Pontificia was eliminated from the name and transcends its regional jurisdiction, going from being the University of Caracas to the Central University of Venezuela, alluding to the new Republic. This name, by the way, has been kept for historical reasons, but the central University does not group or administer other universities in the country.
In November 1856, the University finally became independent from the Santa Rosa Seminary by moving to the building of the old San Francisco convent (now the Palace of the Academies ). For its part, the seminary continued to exist until September 21, 1872, when it was closed and expropriated by Antonio Guzmán Blanco.
The UCV in recent times
Since 1953, it has been located in the University City of Caracas, decreed in 1943 by President Isaías Medina Angarita, architecturally projected by maestro Carlos Raúl Villanueva and built, to a large extent, under the government of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. The current headquarters (the University City of Caracas) is the most emblematic works of this master whose magnificence reached its peak on November 30 of the year 2000, to being declared the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
His move was due to the fact that between 1930 and 1940 the capacity of the San Francisco Convent collapsed due to the growth of the student population, which had forced the university authorities to disperse the faculties throughout the city. Therefore, the 2 of October of 1943 Isaias Medina Angarita ordered the construction of another university headquarters and the Institute of the City University (ICU), attached body the Ministry of Public Works responsible for coordinating the construction was established. The then Rector Antonio José Castillo played a fundamental role in this decision, who insisted on the need to bring together all the faculties, schools and institutes of the UCV in a single nucleus.
Originally the Ciudad Universitaria was on the outskirts of Caracas, on the grounds of Hacienda Ibarra (formerly owned by Simón Bolívar), and it took approximately 20 years to fully build. However, the 2 of March of 1954, Marcos Perez Jimenez opened the cover Square, the Great Hall and Central Library on the occasion of the celebration of the Tenth Ibero – American Conference in Caracas.
In its original project, the University City consisted of 60 buildings distributed among green areas that covered 203 hectares. Currently, there are more than 70 buildings in it, including the Botanical Garden of Caracas and the Central Library of the UCV. The buildings house 9 of the 11 faculties of the University, with Veterinary Sciences and Agronomy based in the city of Maracay. The University City is also home to one of the most important art collections in the world, which includes buildings as examples of the modernist movement of the 20th century and murals, mosaics, stained glass windows and sculptures by abstract-geometric, constructivist, surrealist and figurative artists from the likes of Fernand Léger, Victor Vasarely, Jean Arp, Wilfredo Lam, Alexander Calder, Alejandro Otero, Francisco Narváez, Oswaldo Vigas, Pascual Navarro and Mateo Manaure, among others. Almost all the works are in the gardens, ceilings, walls and windows of the buildings, which turns the university campus into a virtual open-air museum.
In these 288 years of university history (1721-2009), the University, at times, has enjoyed full autonomy; At other times, political regimes have reserved the right to appoint authorities, and there has been a period in which the University has been forced to suspend its activities. The most prolonged closure of their teaching functions occurred during the Gomez dictatorship, when the closure was decreed for ten years (1912-1922).
In the democratic stage, the UCV has deepened its scientific and social contributions. The laboratories have produced the vaccine against leprosy created by Jacinto Convit, the New Castle vaccine that has made possible the mass rearing of poultry, the Carora breed of cattle, as well as high-quality fattening and dairy cattle; the Venezuelan pavilion in Seville for the celebration of the V Centenary of the Discovery. At the UCV, 70% of the research carried out throughout the country is carried out.
