The “Salvador González Lobo” Institute of Sciences and Humanities from Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila is an education institution of the secondary level, which is committed to science and culture promotion. Through a humanistic and universal focus, it seeks the development of each individual, preparing them for life through the acquisition of knowledge and abilities and promoting in students a spirit of service. It also applies attitudes and values such as honesty, responsibility, freedom, justice, respect, solidarity, dialogue and sustainability for the social well-being and the improvement of the environment.

For the year 2020, the Institute of Sciences and Humanities will be an institution evaluated and accredited by local and national organisms but especially recognized by its community. It will have an affectively integrated staff which will be competent and motivated in the performance of its work, with decent salaries and incentives according to their effort and improvement. Its graduates are recognized by our society and the admission to higher education for those who desire to continue studying is assured. The comprehensive formation that they received allows them to develop successfully in different work sectors of our society in an alternative way. The institution responds effectively and in due course to the implementation of educational options according to the needs of the environment and of its students. Thus, it has functional and comfortable facilities, equipped at the level of an accredited institution, with a harmonious, sustained and sustainable growth, which along with the points mentioned above, responds with quality and warmth to its high socio-educational commitment.

It promotes in students a spirit of service, applying attitudes and values such as honesty, responsibility, freedom, justice, respect, solidarity, dialogue and sustainability, for the well-being of our society and for the improvement of the environment.

Conceptualizing high school as the level of studies in which the central subject of the educational process is the student and establishing that the fundamental means for this process is the teacher-student relationship, it is intended that high school:

-becomes the continuity of the comprehensive education process, in which the student participates in the comprehension, analysis and critical judgment of the collection of universal values involved in the evolution of science, technology and human development in general.

-becomes formative, in such a way that students develop abilities and attitudes which promote in an objective, logical, analytical and critical way their reasoning, communication and expression, since this will allow them to assume a responsible and supportive position towards their environment.

-makes students aware of their role in society, allowing them to develop criteria to judge, act and participate with commitment and with transformation purposes in the different social phenomena.

– provides students with the essential foundation for the comprehension and exercise of knowledge, languages and methodologies referring to diverse disciplines and their application in the sociocultural context.

-gives students the scientific, technological and humanistic indispensable foundations for their higher education.

The Institute of Sciences and Humanities was born in the year of 1972 with the name of “Preparatoria Popular” (“Popular High School”) from the initiative of a group of university students who were trying to offer workers a more feasible option to complete their secondary education studies. This high school arises and is developed under the philosophy of Paulo Freire – to educate for freedom – and from its beginning, it is distinguished by having a close teacher-student relationship and by a constant and active participation in the academic and political life of the university.

In this way, some of its teachers participate in the consolidation of autonomy in the year of 1973, during the elaboration of the university statutes which regulate our university. The staff of teachers showed, at an early stage, its concern for academic innovation and, after two years of its opening, the study program of our high school was reformed. It now included the subject of “Methodology”, which was not included then in any study program of any high school in the north of the country. It changed the traditional system of subjects for a system of academic areas where the different courses were grouped according to their content and area of knowledge.

In 1980, the “Preparatoria Popular” finally acquired its own building because, up to that moment, it had been working in classrooms which were lent by the School of Chemical Sciences. From that moment on, it started to offer a morning shift, meeting since then the needs of an important sector of the west part of the city.

Years later, it changed its name for the current name that it has – Instituto de Ciencias y Humanidades “Salvador González Lobo” (“Salvador González Lobo” Institute of Sciences and Humanities) – trying to expand more its horizons and to emphasize the principles of the university high schools: the person as a fundament and the knowledge as a tool. In the same way, it adopted the name of Lic. González Lobo as a recognition to who was the first president of the university.

The continuous concern of the Institute of Sciences and Humanities for the improvement of its teaching practices, led teachers to present, in the year of 1990, an innovative high school project based on a system of credits where courses were grouped by modules and where students found by themselves a plan which allowed them to structure in a personalized way their high school study program by being able to choose their schedule and teachers. In the same way, they were able to dose their academic workload according to their own needs.

This project was presented to university authorities, being the professor Remigio Valdez the president of the university, and the engineer José María Fraustro Siller the Coordinator of Academic Affairs. Although some skepticism was shown at the beginning towards this idea (as this kind of education system was only present at some schools of higher education in other universities), it was accepted as a pilot program. By showing its benefits over time, it was adopted in a definite way, producing a considerable number of student generations graduating under this system and some students finishing their high school studies in one year and a half. This confirms the avant-garde spirit of the university, being UA de C the first institution of higher education to give flexibility to the study program that is so trendy nowadays.