Mission

According to its basis and principles, the Catholic University of Colombia focuses its mission on the individual. For this:
• It generates its own educational act from its intellectual nature and its doctrinal wealth in use of the knowledge autonomy.
• It conceives education as an intelligence and freedom act of the individual. Being education a moral act par excellence which human beings assume with full knowledge, their life responsibility and co-responsibility with the environment are expressions of their personal dignity.
• It encourages the training in the studiositas virtue in its community. That is to think, to foster creativity and innovation, as well as to acquire knowledge, skills and abilities.
• It presents itself before the world as a renewing and transcendent option for men.

Mission commitments:

In order to fulfill its mission, the Catholic University of Colombia assumes the following commitments:

• To foster the intellectual life, through curricular activities that contribute to promote it.
• To tend for the acquisition of the study habit in its academic community, so that it allows to fully exercise the capacity of human thinking.
• To encourage the production of new ideas through collaborative work.
• To emphasize that education in the University is, above all, a human act, of which people are responsible.
• To assume the human person as the origin of his/her own actions and not as a result of the environment.
• To recognize knowledge and learning as universal patrimonies of the universities.
• To study, analyze, sensitize and formulate proposals against cultural, political, economic and social local conditions as well as regional, national and international ones.
• To disseminate the principles of the Catholic doctrine and the Church social teaching.
• To offer the intellectual conditions that allow the individual to choose a free option for God, so that he/she can acknowledge his faith.

The Catholic University of Colombia is projected with a vision formulated as a result of the following postulate:

– To be recognized as an institution that trains its students with a high level of responsibility awareness for themselves and society, by incorporating in their training the human spiritual dimension and interacting with society through its students, teachers and academic results.

The University formulates its development plans on a regular basis. With them, the University approaches towards the institutional vision, in compliance with its educational project.

Colombian higher education system was already opened to diverse educational projects and supported university autonomy under the direction and supervision of the State when, in March 1970, a group of laypeople at the service of Catholicism founded The Catholic University of Colombia on their own initiative. These people were: Humberto Álvarez Rico, Alfonso Arango Henao, Olmedo Bedoya Piedrahita, Lorenzo Botero Jaramillo, Álvaro León Cajiao Bolaños, Arístides Castillo Castillo, Carlos Delgado Fernández, Hernán García Piedrahita, Gilberto Giraldo Herrera, Édgar Gómez Betancourt (current Chairman), Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, Henry Henao Jaramillo, Aurelio Manotas Morales, Juan Manuel Pachón Rubiano, Ángel María Quintero Hernández, Emigdio Rincón Gómez, Pedro Felipe Valencia and Jorge Vives Abello.

At the beginning, our University operated under the name: “Fundación Educacional Interamericana Católica de Colombia” and it started teaching classes on the 2nd of April, 1970 with only 226 students. Between 1974 and 1979, the applications went up from 1109 to 4970. First course registrations also went up from 749 to 1604; and the total registrations increased from 749 to 6949. That way, in the first decade of its existence, the University had already 1333 university graduates and 511 graduating students from its different careers.

In 1983, The National Government gave the university recognition as a University Institution by the Resolution Number 15647 of the Ministry of Education.

By 2015, The Catholic University of Colombia has about 10,000 undergraduate students and 1,200 specialization and master students. Throughout its 45 years of existence, the University has granted about 40,000 undergraduate degrees and 15,000 postgraduate degrees.

Since its creation, The Catholic University of Colombia has been consolidating its programs by means of the strengthening of teaching, research and extension, under the management of those who have been principals:

• Alfonso Arango Henao (1970-1974)
• Emigdio Rincón Gómez (1975-1984)
• Gilberto Giraldo Herrera (1985- June 1989)
• Édgar Gómez Betancourt (July 1989 – June 1994)
• Jorge Yarce Maya (July 1994 – September 1994)
• Juan Manuel Pachón Rubiano (October 1995 – June 1998)
• Jorge Leyva Durán (July 1998 – March 2000)
• Edwin de Jesús Horta Vásquez (August 2001 – September 2007)
• Francisco José Gómez Ortiz (September 2007 – currently)

The University started with the programs of Law, Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Architecture, Economics Sciences and Educational Sciences, which later was changed to Psychology.

In 1985, the Faculty of Systems Engineering was founded and, in 1995, the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications was approved. Nevertheless, all the engineering programs were subsequently unified in a single faculty.

In 1984, the University created the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Lyceum for preschool, primary, secondary and high school education. On the 27th of August 1991, the Lyceum’s name was officially changed to Catholic University Lyceum.

On their part, the Technology School of The Catholic University (UCET) started its activities in 2003 at La Caro headquarters. This institution answered to a technological training need to support the agro-industrial and business development of Colombia. However, the registration processes at the University were interrupted because of the high offering of public universities’ technological programs in the region.

All the undergraduate and postgraduate academic programs of The Catholic University of Colombia benefit from the legal support of the Ministry of Education and the University Superior Council.