UNIVERSITé CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN

The 'Université catholique de Louvain', sometimes known as 'UCL', is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve and in Brussels. It is a complete university.

Contents

History

Campuses

Prospects

Faculties

General credit

Notable alumni

See also

External links

History

In the 15^th century the city of Leuven requested for a university and John IV, Duke of Brabant gave his support to the request. With a papal bull signed by Pope Martin V on 9 December 1425 the Louvain University was founded as a ''Studium Generale''. As such it is the oldest Catholic university in the world still in existence today. In its early days this university was modeled after the universities of Paris, Cologne and Vienna. The university flourished in the 16^th century due to the presence of famous scientists and professors, such as Adriaan Florenszoon Boeyens (Pope Adrian VI), Desiderius Erasmus, Joan Lluís Vives, Andreas Vesalius and Gerardus Mercator.
In 1797 however the old university was closed under the reign of the French Republic, as the region was annexed to France during the French Revolutionary Wars. When the region was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands , William I of the Netherlands founded a new university in 1816 in Leuven as a ''Rijksuniversiteit'' (E: State university). Belgium became independent in 1830, and the Belgian bishops founded a new Roman catholic university in 1834, at Mechelen, but already in 1835, the catholic university returned to Leuven, where the ''Rijksuniversiteit'' had been closed.
The next milestone came in 1968 when the bilingual ''Catholic University of Leuven'' was split into two universities, which became independent institutions in 1970 . The split was caused by repeated protests from Flemish organisations and student population (''Leuven Vlaams'' action, E: Leuven Flemish). The Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), remained in Leuven (Flanders, north part of Belgium), and the French-speaking ''Université Catholique de Louvain'' (UCL), moved to Louvain-la-Neuve at Ottignies (Wallonia, south part of Belgium). Now there is about a forty-five minute drive between the two universities.
The University was based in Leuven ("''Louvain''" in French), 30 km from Brussels, until 1968 . Up to that year, resentment had been growing among Flemings because of privileges given to French-speaking academic staff and the perceived lack of respect by the local French-speaking community for Flanders, wherein Leuven lies. Some French-speakers proposed to change the administrative status of Leuven, including it in a larger, bilingual 'Greater-Brussels'. This proposal however was not well received among Flemish nationalists and some wanted to expel any trace of the French language from Flanders, thus opposing a bilingual university located on Flemish territory. The linguistic dispute was resolved by the following settlement: the Dutch-speaking part, now named Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, would stay in Leuven (which is in the part of Belgium where Dutch is the official language), while the French-speaking part would move to a newly created town, Louvain-la-Neuve, 20 km south-east of Brussels (where French is the official language).

Campuses

While the main campus of Université catholique de Louvain is based at Louvain-la-Neuve, there is however a small campus in Brussels, in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, which until recently used to be called "Louvain-en-Woluwe" (the authorities of the UCL tend to prefer nowadays to refer to it as "UCL-Brussels"). This satellite campus hosts the faculty of Medicine of the university. The campus is served by Alma station on line 1B of the Brussels Metro.

Prospects

According to a 2007 agreement, the Université Catholic de Louvain should absorb ere long three small french-speaking catholic colleges: the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (FUNDP) located in Namur, the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis (FUSL) located in Brussels and the Facultés universitaires catholiques de Mons (FUCAM) located in Mons and Charleroi. Negociations started in september 2007 and they sould lead to the creation of a new university which should be called Université Catholique the Louvain (UCL) (campus might be identified as UCL/Brussels, UCL/Louvain-la-Neuve, UCL/Mons, UCL/Namur and UCL/Charleroi). The four universities are already part of a common group, the "Academie Louvain". Within this group, member universities have coordinated their masters programmes in the fields of economics, management, political sciences and sciences.

Faculties

# Faculty of Theology (theology)
# Faculty of Philosophy (also known as the Institute of Philosophy, ISP)(philosophy)
# Faculty of Law (law)
# Faculty of Economical, Social and Political Sciences.(economics, management , sociology, anthropology, political sciences, communication, journalism, demography, development studies).
# Faculty of Philosophy and Literature (Arts and Humanities)(languages and literature, history, history of art, theatre, archeology)
# Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (psychology, education)
# Faculty of Science (biology, chemistry, physics, geography, mathematics, computer science)
# Faculty of Engineering (engineering)
# Faculty of Applied Bioscience and Engineering (bio-engineering, agronomy, environmental studies)
# Faculty of Medicine (medicine)
# Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (pharmacology)
# Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences (kinesiology, physical education)

General credit

The Université catholique de Louvain educates around 22,000 students (2003) in all areas of studies, from theology to biology and from nuclear physics to law. It has educated a large part of Belgium's elite and is still considered, with its Dutch-speaking sister, as a centre of excellence in many fields. In 2006, it was ranked 76th in the world universities ranking established by the Times higher education supplement (24th in Europe). It is connected to Brussels by a train service, and the new town and campus is unusually architecturally interesting.

Notable alumni

★ Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, a mathematician who proved the prime number theorem

★ Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin, a minerologist and geologist

★ Georges Lemaître, who proposed the Big Bang theory (''at the time, Université catholique de Louvain was based in Leuven and was the same as the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven'')

★ Christian de Duve, Nobel Prize in Medicine 1974, for his discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell

★ Jean-Pierre de Launoit, businessman.

★ José J. Fripiat, a chemist, and laureate of the 1967 Francqui Prize

★ Geza Vermes, religious historian and translator into English of the Dead Sea Scrolls

★ HRH Princess Mathilde, Duchess of Brabant, wife of HRH Prince Philippe, Duke of Brabant and future Queen Consort of Belgium

★ Camilo Torres Restrepo, Colombian priest and guerillero.

★ Gustavo Gutierrez, Peruvian Dominican theologian, founder of Liberation Theology.

★ Adolphe Gesché (1928-2005)

★ Philippe Van Parijs (1951), philosopher and economist

★ Christian Arnsperger (1966), economist

★ David Payne (1944)

★ Rafael Correa, the newly elected President of Ecuador

★ Maurice Anthony Biot, Belgian-American physicist and the founder of the theory of poroelasticity.

★ Edgar Sengier, director of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga

★ Páll Skúlason, philosopher and former Rector of the University of Iceland.

★ Jacques Taminiaux, philosopher, 1977 laureate of the Francqui Prize

★ Jacques van Ypersele de Strihou, private secretary of the King of Belgium.

★ Dyab Abou Jahjah - Lebanese-Belgian political activist

See also

★ Louvain School of Management

★ Hoover Chair

★ Louvain-la-Neuve

★ List of universities in Belgium

★ University Foundation

★ Science Parks of Wallonia

External links

★ Official web site of Université catholique de Louvain

★ IAG's official website. IAG is the affiliated business school of UCL and is part of the CEMS network of leading european business schools.

★ The Louvain-la-Neuve Science Park website