Federico Santa María Technical University

The Federico Santa María Technical University (Spanish: Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, UTFSM, or simply Santa Maria University) is a Chilean university member of the Rector's Council (CRUCh), founded in 1931 in Valparaíso, Chile.

The university has campuses in Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Santiago (Vitacura and San Joaquín) and Concepcion. The Federico Santa María Technical University is the alma mater of several prominent businessmen, engineers and Chilean scientists. Its students and alumni are known as "Sansanos".

The UTFSM was the first Chilean university to confer a doctorate in engineering in 1962 and the first higher-education institution in Latin America to confer this degree. The UTFSM university radio is the oldest campus radio in Latin America.

The university admission is very competitive and, it is known for its rigorous study requirements, demanding study program. For the years 2011–2016, the UTFSM has an undergraduate retention rate of 82% by the first year of studies, and a 66% by the second year. Less than 1% of its students are international, and most of the available courses are imparted in Spanish.

The graduation date is held on 20 December every year, since it commemorates the anniversary of the death of the founder, Federico Santa Maria Carrera, on 20 December 1925.

History

The university takes its name from Federico Santa María, a Chilean philanthropist that lived in France. He raised a huge fortune as a broker in the sugar market in Paris. Before his death, he donated all his fortune to create a university in Valparaíso, his hometown. Although the exact amount of his fortune is unknown, it is believed to have been around 27 billion dollars of today's currency. While in Paris in 1920, in his testament, Santa María donated his fortune with the idea of building a high-standard technical and scientific institution.

In his will, Santa María manifested that his desired executors contribute to material progress and expand Chile's cultural horizons; altruistic ideas which sought to facilitate entry into the academic life of outstanding compatriots dispossessed but without further requirement than merit, skills and high academic achievement. This institution would accept and prepare the best students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to gain technical and scientific knowledge that contribute to the progress of the country.

The executors were chosen by Santa María to be Agustin Edwards Mac-Clure, Juan Brown Caces, Carlos van Buren and Andrew Geddes.

Following his philosophy, on March 31, 1926, an institution was created to develop Santa María's legacy. In 1931, the School of Crafts and Arts and School of Engineering José Miguel Carrera was founded. In 1935, its name changed to Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María.

The condition imposed by Federico Santa María was that, during the first 10 years, the university must receive academics from the best schools of sciences and engineering. Following this imperative, the executor of this project, Agustín Edwards Mac-Clure, traveled to Germany where he contacted Karl Laudien, at the time rector of a technical school in the Western Pemerania region, and he became the first rector of the university. From that moment, the university received a strong German influence in its engineering education. Several German engineers and scientists arrived before and after the second world war from institutions such as TU Berlin, Berlin University, and Leipzig University among other German institutions. They brought to the university cutting edge knowledge in physics, chemistry and engineering. For example, Arnold Keller, professor of the Physics department at UTFSM, was involved in the development of the V-1 rockets during the second world war, as part of the team of Wernher von Braun. Research in new areas to the country such as Solar Energy, or Chemistry of Natural Products were created, which delivered two Nacional Science Prize awards, Herbert Appel in 1970, and Juan Garbarino in 1998.

Campuses

The university has three campuses and two branch campuses (sedes):

Casa Central, main campus. Inaugurated in 1931 in Valparaíso

Campus Vitacura, Inaugurated in 1995 in Vitacura, Santiago, Chile.

Campus San Joaquín. Inaugurated in 2009 in San Joaquin, Santiago, Chile.

Sede José Miguel Carrera, located in Viña del Mar.

Sede Rey Balduino de Bélgica, Inaugurated in 1972 in Talcahuano, Chile.

While the campuses are focused on undergraduate, graduate and university academical activities, sedes are mainly dedicated to technical degrees.

Additionally the UTFSM started in 1996 a Campus located in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from an agreement with the Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manta, campus which closed in 2018, with the infrastructure being taken over by a newly created university, Universidad del Rio. Around 600 students in 2019 expect to be graduated by 2023, process which will lead to the definitive closure of UTFSM Activities in Ecuador.

Main campus, Valparaíso

The main UTFSM campus (or Casa Central) is located in Valparaíso, covering most of the front area of Los Placeres hill, on the grounds of the former Pudeto fort. The site faces the Pacific coast and it is visible from many parts of the bay of Valparaíso.

The building was designed by Josué Smith Solar, one of the most respected Chilean architects of the 20th century, and his son José Smith Miller. The American Neo-Gothic style campus is considered one of the foremost works of Chilean architecture. The campus is also recognised for its beautiful gardening, with native and exotic species.

In 2001, the illumination of the university frontis was renewed through a contest organised by the Chilean branch of Philips.

The main campus has a gothic scholastic architecture with a privileged view to the Pacific Ocean. This campus includes more than 3 hectares of green areas making it the biggest urban park in Valparaiso, despite it being closed to the public. In 2008 it was chosen as one of the most remarkable national architectural works of the 20th century.

Branch campus Viña del Mar, "José Miguel Carrera"

In the 1960s, the university formulated an expansion plan. With financial assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the support of the Ford Foundation, advice from Dunwoody Industrial Institute in the US, and a donation of land by Chile's Agricultural Development Institute INDAP (from the Spanish "Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario"), a fully furnished building was constructed in 1971 in Viña del Mar, and it was named the "Jose Miguel Carrera" branch campus, following the testamentary vision of the university founder, the philanthropist Federico Santa María.

Academic rankings and accreditation

The UTFSM has been historically perceived as one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the country and more recently, with the appearance of national and international rankings, has been placed among the top Universities in Chile and Latin America. The UTFSM has consistently been considered as one of the best engineering universities in Latin America, and appears regularly as a highly ranked university in many of the published world university rankings.

For 10 consecutive years, UTFSM has been ranked among the three best Universities in Chile in terms of quality perception given by more than 1000 important national business executives.

In 2012, the university was ranked 5 between 9,500 schools of engineering in the world according to their impact factor in the last 5 years (Microsoft Academics), as the latinoamerican university with the largest normalized impact factor, and as the first school of engineering in South America.

According to Times Higher Education Ranking UTFSM has been decreasing its ranking from being among the 251-275 best Universities in the World in 2015, to being between the 1201-1500 best universities. Its THE ranking for the UTFSM in Latin America has decreased from #13 in 2016, to #49 in 2022.

In 2019, the UTFSM was ranked 2nd in Latin America in the Times Higher Education (THE) world ranking for Engineering and Technology.

US News has ranked the UTFSM as #64 in the Best Global Universities ranking, #15 in the Best Universities in Latin America ranking, and #3 in the Best Universities in Chile ranking.

Accreditations

Chilean National Accreditation commission CNA: 6 years until December 2022

Organization

Directive council

As of 2025, the president of the UTFSM Directive Council is Ms. Yessica Cartagena. The following table summarizes the different presidents the UTFSM has had in its history.

Rector

The current rector is Professor Juan I. Yuz Eissmann, professor of electronic engineering at UTFSM was ratified as the new rector of the university for the period 2022–2026. Some notable events:

Two rectors died at the time of having the role, i.e., Armando Quezada in 1936, and Commander Juan Naylor in 1977. They were replaced by Interim Rectors until a new rector was chosen through a vote.

One rector have had to resign due to protests within the university, i.e., Carlos Cerutti in 1968.

Three "delegate" rectors were designated by a military junta. During the Military regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) the university rector was designated by the military junta instead of a normal voting process. Three "delegate rectors", retired military men, had this role during the period: Commander Juan Naylor (1973-1977), Vice-admiral Ismael Huerta (1977-1985) and Commander Arturo Niño de Zepeda (1985-1989).

Two of the rectors were siblings, i.e., Jaime Chiang Acosta (1968-1972), and Gustavo Chiang Acosta (1989-1993).

Jaime Chiang Acosta (1969-1972) was the first rector chosen through a voting process in the university community.

Jaime Chiang Acosta (1969-1972) was the first rector that was also a UTFSM alumnus, a Civil Chemical Engineering graduate (1952) with a PhD from the University of Louisiana.

Gustavo Chiang Acosta (1989-1993), a UTFSM civil mechanical engineer graduated in 1949, was also the first rector chosen by popular vote of the university community after the end of the Pinochet military regime.

A candidate for rector needs to obtain at least 60% of the votes in an election from the Full Board (Claustro Pleno, constituted of all academics at the university) to be elected directly, otherwise the decision remains with the Directive Board. This mechanism has been used in several elections, but the board usually confirms the voting mayority, such as in the case of Jose Rodriguez vs. Raul Steigmeyer in 2010, and in the case of Darcy Fuenzalida vs. Marcello Visconti in 2014.

During the election for rector in 1993, a tight election between Manfred Max-Neef and Adolfo Arata gave the former a 1-vote victory in the first election round, and a 2-vote victory during the second round. In this case the Directive Board chose to award the election to Adolfo Arata.

Academic departments

Due to the focused nature of the university, its organisation currently does not include different faculties, only different academic departments, which carry out research and graduate/undergraduate educational programs. Originally, faculties had been considered in the university organization, with the founding of the first three faculties in 1944, Chemical, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Faculties were subsequently abolished under Adolfo Arata's period as rector.

Education

The university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees. The undergraduate degrees can be of 12 academic semesters (civil engineering), 10 semesters (engineering, pure sciences and architecture), 8 semesters (Applied Engineering) and 6 semesters (technical careers). The graduate degrees offered by this university are Masters (MSc.) and Doctorate (PhD). The Masters of Science degree requires 2 years of study, and the Doctorate degree requires 3 to 5 years of study. All graduate degrees require entrants to have a bachelor's degree.

Engineering degrees

The engineering degrees at UTFSM (and throughout Chile) are offered in different degrees of difficulty.

Chemical Engineering

The Chemical Engineering School at UTFSM was founded together with the foundation of the School of Engineers in 1935, being one of the oldest degrees offered by the university. The first Chilean and Latin American doctorate degree in chemical engineering was given to Walter Gaete Castro in 1962, with a cooperation between UTFSM and University of Pittsburgh, US. Nowadays, the chemical engineering department has the name of Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering (IQA, in Spanish), where Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering degrees are offered. The research topics at IQA are:

• Design of industrial processes
• Environmental Engineering
• Food Science and Bioprocesses
• Minerals Processing
• Automation and process control

The Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering has 12 associate professors, 11 with PhD degrees (92%). The department offers the graduate programs of Master of Science and PhD in chemical engineering.

Mechanical Engineering

The Mechanical Engineering School at UTFSM was founded together with the foundation of the School of Engineers in 1935, being one of the oldest degrees offered by the university. Its first four mechanical engineers graduated in 1939. The mechanical engineering department was also among the first to offer a PhD program in 1964 (along with Chemical and Electrical Engineering Departments).

The mechanical engineering department has the following research areas:

• Thermodynamics
• Energy and Renewable energies
• Process engineering

The department has 20 full-time professors (2016 data), 17 with PhD degrees (85%). Additional to the Bachelor of Sciences in mechanical engineering (BSc.), the department offers the graduate programs of Master of Science (BSc.) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in mechanical engineering. The department has also made substantive efforts to connect with its alumni. A comprehensive list of the graduates of the department can be found online.

Research

Since 2010 UTFSM has been awarded with nearly US$8 million for 76 research projects. Many of these projects involve national and international collaborations with prestigious institutions in Latin America (ANDES Laboratory Project, RIABIN Biotechnology Network), Europe (CERN, Max Planck Institut, Politecnico di Milano), and USA (MIT, SLAC), among others.

Cultural activities

University radio

The Federico Santa Maria University radio was created on the 7 April 1937, and it is the oldest university radio in Latin America. It can be heard on 1450 kHz in the AM spectrum, on 99.7 MHz in the FM spectrum, and online.

University Chamber Choir

The Chamber Choir of the Federico Santa María Technical University was founded on August 4, 1951, in its Valparaiso Campus. It is the second oldest choir in Chile with continuous activity. During the choir's over 60 years of existence, it has interpreted an extensive repertoire, including all manifestations of choral western music, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The choir's first performance was at the closing ceremony of the academic year in December 1951, in the Aula Magna, main hall of events in the "A" building of the university's Main Valparaíso campus.

Demosthenes Penna, engineering student of this campus, was its founder and first director until 1954. From March 1955, the choir was directed by Silvio Olate Valenzuela for over 28 years until March 1983. From 1983 to 1987, it was directed by Mauricio Pergelier Hernandez. For the next 23 years, from 1987 to 2010, the choir was conducted by Eduardo Silva Cerda. From 2010, the choir has been conducted by Felipe Molina Lavandera.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)