La Salle-URL receives the Gold Medal for Scientific Merit

Wednesday, 27 May 2015. Yesterday afternoon La Salle-URL received the Gold Medal for Scientific Merit of Barcelona City Council for its 50 years of valuable work in scientific and technical development and its practical knowledge in the areas of Engineering, Management, Architecture and other disciplines.

The Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, presented the medal to Brother Josep Guiteras i Llimona, president of La Salle Private University and Technology Foundation, who thanked the mayor for the award on behalf of everyone who helped to facilitate the work at La Salle-URL in the past 50 years and those who made it possible to develop telecommunications around the world. Also present at the ceremony was the Culture Councillor of the City Council, Mr Jaume Ciurana.

Josep Maria Santos, General Manager of La Salle-URL briefly explained the historical background and the milestones achieved by La Salle-URL in the field of teaching and university education in the last 50 years.

La Salle-URL is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first university studies in Telecommunications in Catalonia in 1965. At that time, the Brothers of the La Salle Christian Schools made a decided commitment to meet the needs of industry by offering the first officially recognised university studies in Telecommunications in Catalonia. La Salle Bonanova college began to teach industrial expertise in 1903. These courses were interrupted in the 1930s but were resumed in 1959, as the embryo of what would come to be the studies in Telecommunications.

When the studies were set up, prior work had already been done by contacting the company, with a work and industrial study conducted in the early 1960s. The conclusion was that 50% of national electronic industries were Catalan, despite the fact that Catalonia had no training centres to prepare qualified personnel. This led to the creation of the School and its studies, which have become a benchmark in the field of telecommunications, leading the way to become an innovative globally renowned teaching institution.

The School has gone through various stages. During the first of these it served as a School of Telecommunications, depending upon Madrid until 1976. A second phase then began, lasting from 1976 to 1991, during which it functioned as a University School of Telecommunications Engineering (EUETT) attached to the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (later the Polytechnic University of Catalonia). It was at this time when students began to occupy prominent places in the electronics, IT, computer, sound, television and communications industries.

Finally, in the last stage from 1991, the School already had its own autonomous project and was as a founding member of the Ramon Llull University. Just then La Salle also set up the Higher Technical School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, or ETSEEI, which made it possible to set up a large number of Advanced Engineering, Masters and postgraduate degrees, such as Europe's first Multimedia Engineering course in 1996.

Currently La Salle-URL includes technical and scientific areas, especially in the fields of Telematics, Telecommunications, Sound and Image, Robotics, Computer Sciences, Multimedia, Architecture, Construction Engineering and Business Management, with six research groups in close contact with the business world. It offers a total of 12 university bachelor's degrees, 8 university masters and 48 URL-specific masters degrees. The academic year 2015-2016 will see the official launch of the first degree qualification in Catalonia in Animation and Visual Effects (VFX).

You can see pictures of the event on Flickr.

More information:
Elisa Alvarez
Press and External Relations
La Salle-URL
Tel. 932 902 386 | ealvarez@salleurl.edu