Guanajuato, Gto., January 28, 2016.- With the expectation to be registered in the list of the Excellent Census of the "Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) as a quality program, the first generation of the Doctorate in History began in the Department of History from the Division of Social Sciences and Human Studies from Campus Guanajuato at the University of Guanajuato (UG).

In an interview, Director of the Department of History, Dr. César Federico Macías Cervantes, referred that the first generation of this doctorate is composed by UG's graduates, students from the "Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala", from the "Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo", "Instituto Tecnológico de Estudiios Superiores de Monterrey", UNAM and also students from Colombia and Chile.

Due to the program's design, the basic academic core is 13 professors of the Department of History and the Department of Culture and Society Studies, from which 8 are members of the "Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI)" which makes evident that it has the parameters, numbers that in CONACYT's evaluations are very well valued, therefore, they think they can access the Excellence Census.

On that condition, the students may have access to a scholarship and could focus on what they must, meaning, their studies, and, at the same time, this creates positive expectations as for the graduate indexes, just as it currently happens with the Master degree, that has high graduate indexes and it is in the National Census Program for Quality Postgraduates (PNPC for its acronym in Spanish).

Dr. Macías Cervantes highlighted that this program is the only doctorate in History in the state of Guanajuato and, even when there are similar programs in the neighboring states; its pertinence is shown with the fact that student from those states, have opted for UG, "that it has to do with the prestige of the University of Guanajuato, of course", he said.

About the approval process for the program, Dr. Macías reminded that, because all the new creation educational programs, there was a proposal first shown to the Consultant Council of Rectors, where they planned the objectives, needs and in its time, got the approval, hence, they continued with the curricular design, program's pertinence evaluation, the design of the study plan, it was a two-month process but it got to a good term for being approved --first—by the Divisional Council and then by the Direction of Academic Support and the Campus Planning Area, COEPES and finally the Campus University Council, which was achieved in April 2015.

It was considered of course, the aperture and solidness that the academic staff has in the Department of History to start this program; in addition, being aware of the using the academic model UG has, interdepartmental, to invite professors from other departments to consolidate the knowledge generation and application lines:

Social and cultural History, Political and Economic History, Theory and Philosophy of History and History and Literature. Particularly, these two last lines are not worked in practically no other university in the country and are presented as vanguard, which makes the program attractive, which will be coordinated by Dr. Graciela Velázquez, who is in charge of the responsibility of leading this effort.

The enrollment will be annually and is considered a non-schooled program of 4 years, where most of the time if for research, mainly projects from students that are tuned by tutorial committees that will accompany the students to provide following for their projects.

Finally, the Director of the Department, revealed that the selection process of this first generation was thorough, hence, not all the applicants were accepted, because we worry about the quality standard, he said, and a Master's degree and formation as historians is required, so they have sufficient knowledge on areas such as historiography and theory of history.