Tecnológico de Monterrey

Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) (English: Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education), also known as Tecnológico de Monterrey, is a secular and coeducational multi-campus private university based in Monterrey, Mexico. ITESM has since grown to include 36 campuses throughout the country, quickly becoming one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America.

ITESM was the first university to be connected to the Internet in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world, having the top-ranked business school in the region according to the Economist and being one of the leaders in patent applications among Mexican universities. The medical school offers the only MD-PhD program available in Mexico, in partnership with the Houston Methodist Hospital

Early years

The institute was founded on September 6, 1943 by a group of local businessmen led by Eugenio Garza Sada, a moneyed heir of a brewing conglomerate who was interested in creating an institution that could provide highly skilled personnel — both university graduates and technicians— to the booming Monterrey corporations of the 1940s. The group was structured into a non-profit organization called Enseñanza e Investigación Superior A.C. (EISAC) and recruited several academicians led by León Ávalos y Vez, an MIT alumnus and then director-general of the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering of the National Polytechnic Institute, who designed its first academic programs and served as its first director-general.