Gold and Silver mining was begun in Mexico within fifty years of the Spanish conquest. The Mining Engineering and the Chemical Engineering needed to extract those valuable metals from the ore have been taught in Mexico from those early colonial days. To meet the colony’s needs for roads and structures, Civil Engineering followed as an academic discipline. Textiles and much later petroleum extraction and refining followed as important industries and they too were included in several Mexican university programs. The gradual industrialization of what is now Mexico brought with it a critical need for engineering education on a broader scale than was traditionally available. Less than forty years ago there was no Mechanical Engineering program in the State of Guanajuato, Mexico. The immediate needs of a Federal Oil Refinery and a Fossil Fuel Power Plant led to the establishment of a modest program utilizing practicing engineers as faculty, on loan part time, from the refinery. The evolution of the program from its earliest days is traced to the present program which includes a doctoral program which is rated among the top three public programs in Mexico.
