Autonomous University of Madrid


The Autonomous University of Madrid, commonly known as simply la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 alongside the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of the Basque Country, in Barcelona and Bilbao, respectively.
The campus of the university spans a rural tract of 650 acres, mostly around metropolitan Madrid. Founded in 1968, its main campus, Cantoblanco, is located near the cities of Alcobendas, San Sebastián de los Reyes and Tres Cantos. UAM's Cantoblanco Campus holds most of the university's facilities. It is located 15 km north of Madrid and has an extension of over 2,200,000 m². Of these are nearly 770,000 urbanised and about a third of them garden areas. UAM offers 94 doctorate programs in all of the universities studies. It also offers 72 unrecognized master's degrees.

History

The Stabilization Plan of 1959 and the development plans of the 1960s boosted the Spanish economy after years of austerity and the self-sufficiency-based economy. The end of diplomatic and economic isolation led to an economic boom in Spain that resulted in the consolidation of a middle class similar to that of other Western European nations. The demand of higher education increased, and the Spanish university system grew increasingly congested.
The Autonomous University of Madrid was established by the 5-1968 Decree approved by the Spanish Council of Ministers during the Francoist dictatorship along with the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Bilbao. This decree was sponsored by the then-Minister of Science and Education, José Luis Villar Palasí, in order to restructure the Spanish university system. The name Universidad Autónoma de Madrid first appeared in an executive order by the Ministry which was published on 13 August 1968.
On June 8, 2018 the Autonomous University of Madrid celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a series of commemorative events, starting with a debate on university autonomy. In the debate, called "Past, present and future ", the rector of the UAM Rafael Garesse, and the rectors of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Margarita Arboix, and the Basque Country, Nekane Balluerka participated.

Campuses

Main campus

UAM's Cantoblanco Campus holds most of the university's facilities. It is located 15 km north of Madrid and has an extension of over 2,200,000 m². Of these are nearly 770,000 urbanised and about a third of them garden areas. The campus was designed as a university town that was to be self-sufficient, but also would be away from Madrid in order to keep student activity against the Francoist dictatorship away from the capital.
Initially, the campus held the faculties of philosophy and liberal arts, law, economics, business management, and science, as well as the rectorate, several other service buildings and sports facilities. The university's other facilities, the faculty of medicine and the teacher training Santa Maria school are in downtown Madrid. There are two other teacher training schools in Segovia and in Cuenca. Over the years, the faculty of psychology, the biology building of the faculty of sciences, the new faculty of law along with its political science annex building, the polytechnic school, the libraries of humanities and sciences, as well as the Erasmus of Rotterdam dormitory have been built on the main campus.
The original faculties were housed in interconnected buildings with several patios in between them. Characteristic of each building is a large number of stairs in its corridors, initially designed to prevent students from running in case of police raids. Currently, this fact has been considered by many university officials as a setback in the integration of handicapped students. The newest facilities were built in a contemporary style, being more accessible and allowing more free movement to students. Sporting facilities include two swimming pools, two multiple-use pavilions, and outdoor tennis, football, basketball, paddle tennis, rugby, and futsal and beach volleyball courts.
Other services on campus include 16 cafeterias and other eating facilities, medical services, a pharmacy with optic care, a foreign languages pavilion, and a bookstore. The campus also houses several research facilities partnered with the Spanish Scientific Research Council. Cantoblanco Campus is accessible by train belonging to Renfe Cercanias Commuter service, or by the Madrid Region Commuter Bus service. The campus is located in the B1 area of the Madrid Transports Consortium.

Medicine Campus

UAM faculty of medicine is located north of Madrid near La Paz teaching hospital. It was inaugurated in 1969. Juan Luis Vives Residence Hall was UAM's first residential facility. It is located in the Plaza Castilla area in northern Madrid. It has 130 residents and holds several cultural activities of the university.

La Cristalera

La Cristalera residence is located in Miraflores de la Sierra, a village north of Madrid that was acquired by the university in 1989. It is used for conferences and meetings and is the main centre of UAM's summer courses.

Academic organization

The UAM is divided into eight faculties and superior schools that support and coordinate most of the university's academic and administrative activity. Each faculty is divided into departments that coordinate the teaching and research of the different subjects. Researchers can organise into research institutes in order to coordinate their activities in a specific research field. The university totals up to 59 departments and eight research institutes. In addition to these, the UAM has seven associate schools, which are not completely part of UAM's administrative structure, but issue UAM-recognised titles and are under UAM's academic regulations.
Faculties and superior schools:
Associate schools are:
UAM administration is established according to the 2001's Organic Law of Universities. The Senior Academic and Administrative Officer of the Autonomous University of Madrid is the rector, who must be, by law, a chair professor serving in the university, elected every four years with a two-term limit by universal graded suffrage. The current rector is José Maria Sanz, chair of applied physics, who substituted his predecessor Angel Gabilondo in 2009, when Gabilondo became Minister of Education. To aid the rector in the management of the university, he or she appoints an indefinite number of vice-rectors leading different administrative departments of the university, and a secretary general coordinating the rector's team and overseeing the legal procedures of the university, as well as university protocol. The rector, in accordance with the university's social board, also designates the manager as part of his team, which oversees the university's economic and administrative activity.
The grades assigned to each sector for rectoral elections in UAM according to its charter are:
UAM's collective government bodies are the University Assembly, The Board of Governors, and The Social Board. The University Assembly is made out of 153 full professors, 84 students, 27 hired, associate, or emeritus professors, 27 members of the non-teaching personnel, 9 research or teaching trainees, the rector, the secretary general, and the manager. It is the highest representative body of the university. It elaborates the university's general guidelines, changes or passes a new university charter, elects twenty members of the Board of Governors, and elects the University Ombudsman.
The Board Of Governors is the ordinary governmental body of the university. It controls and passes regulations on most of the university's academic, personnel, and administrative issues. It is composed of the rector, the secretary general, the manager, 20 members elected by the assembly according to its composition, all the deans and the head of the polytechnic school, 7 heads of department, a head of research institute, 15 members designated by the rector and three members of the Social Board.
The Social Board is the body responsible for the relations between university and society. Its members are designated by trade unions, the municipality of Madrid, employers unions, companies related to the university, the Madrid Assembly and the Board of Governors of the university. It also oversees the universities financial activities and passes the university budget. Its current chairman is Manuel Pizarro.
Faculties are headed by a dean, whilst the responsible of the polytechnic school is called head. They are elected in the same way as the rector and have also a limit of two four-year terms. They are aided by vice-deans or deputy heads. They are overseen by a faculty or school board. Departments are led by the head of department and overseen by the department council.

Studies

Undergraduate

UAM offers Spanish undergraduates fully recognized degrees. There are the Diplomatura and Ingenierías Técnicas, which are three year studies equivalent to an associate degree. Licenciaturas and Ingenierías Superiores are four to five years studies equivalent to a bachelor's degree. Along with that, UAM offers second level licenciaturas, which allow people who have a diplomatura to obtain a licenciatura by taking courses. In other case, they must have at least the first two or three years of a licenciatura and combined degree, which are very popular among Spanish students. They also offer courses in languages other than Spanish.
In addition to the Faculties where the degrees on the different fields of knowledge and science are studied —Faculty of Science, F. of Business and Economic Science, F. of Law, F. of Philosophy and the Arts, F. of Teacher Training and Education, F. of Psychology, F. of Medicine and School of Engineering— there are external centers that teach specific studies and their associated degree: “La Salle” Centre of Higher Education, The Red Cross School of Nursing, The Jimenez Diaz Foundation University School of Nursing, The ONCE University School of Physioterapy.

Graduate

UAM offers 94 PhD programs in all of the universities programs. It also offers 72 unrecognised master's degrees, and with the implementation of the Bologna Process 16 recognised master's degrees for the academic year of 2006-07.

Research

In addition, the alliance of the four leading Spanish public Universities, two in Madrid and two in Barcelona allows close collaboration between projects and researchers.

Reputation

Throughout its history, the UAM has been one of Spain's most prominent higher education institutions, being ranked first amongst Spanish universities by the El Mundo University Supplement, by The Times Higher Education Supplement, and by the Academic Ranking of World Universities yearly published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In the rankings on education, the UAM has positioned itself as one of the best young universities in the world, with an outstanding international projection in the field of research. For the subject "Mathematics" the university was ranked within top 51-75 universities in the world. In the "Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 University Rankings", the University achieved 49th position globally in 2012. In another similar ranking "QS Top 50 Under 50" by Quacquarelli Symonds, the Autonomous University of Madrid recently achieved 9th place in international comparison. Its Faculty of Law is the most prestigious one in Spain. It is the Spanish university with the most researchers among the most cited according to the Thomson Reuters ranking citation in 2011.

Student life

Societies and compromise

The Autonomous University of Madrid has an active student body, having organised one of Spain's most important events against the dictatorship in 1976 called the Iberian Peoples Festival. It had an attendance of over 70,000. UAM has over a hundred student societies covering activities ranging from student unionism to theatre and music. The oldest active association in UAM is the Law Students Association, a left-leaning student union established in 1981. Furthermore, there are new prominent societies in the field of social sciences, such a Debate Society and a Model UN society, both founded and run mainly by law students.
UAM does not have a formal student government body, as it has been rejected by students in several occasions, and instead students elect different student unions to the different university government bodies.
In recent years, UAM students have organised massively to protest against terrorism, after the assassination of Francisco Tomas y Valiente by ETA in 1995, against the Organic Law of Universities in 2001, to clean Spain's northern coast after the Prestige oil spill in 2002, against the War in Iraq in 2003, to assist to the II European Social Forum also in 2003, and in solidarity with the victims of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Festivals and parties

UAM is also a festive campus, holding several festivals during spring. The most important one was the Spring festival held until 1993, but halted due to massification. Since then minor festivals have been held by student associations. These festivals usually consist of rock concerts by amateur rock bands from midday until dusk. According to university regulations, festival profits have to be destined to charities or to the organisation of cultural events. In 2005, due to massification of the festivals that led to several problems, university officials suspended further festivals until a more convenient place for their celebration would be found. Thus, no festivals were held in 2006.

Notable alumni

Royalty