The Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte stems from the Universidade of Rio Grande do Norte, created on June 25th, 1958, through a state law and was federalized on December 18th, 1960. It was installed on March 21st, 1959, and constituted from faculties and higher education schools already existent in Natal, such as the Faculty of Pharmacy and Dentistry, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Medicine, and the School of Engineering, among others. Currently, UFRN is present in 2 campi in Natal – Central Campus and Health Campus – and in 5 campi in the countryside; Caicó Campus – CERES; Currais Novos Campus – CERES; Campus of the Brain – Neurosciences Institute; Macaíba Campus – Jundiaí Agricultural School and Santa Cruz Campus – Faculty of Health Sciences of Trairi, in 62 municipalities with community service actions and in 20 on-ground poles for distance learning support, 13 of these located in Rio Grande do Norte and 7 in other Federal States: Paraíba, Pernambuco, and Alagoas. A recent Restructuring and Expansion Plan of UFRN – REUNI approved for the period 2008-2012 by the Ministry of Education, entails the creation of new undergraduate and postgraduate programs and the expansion of the number of students to 45,000. It establishes the expansion of the student assistance policies, student and faculty mobility, curricular innovations and social inclusion, and the hiring of new academic and technical-administrative staff.
In the past few years, UFRN has been developing structuring actions to advance in the search for quality and internationalization, with the development of science, technological innovation, social inclusion, and strengthening the interaction with society and governments. These initiatives create academically structuring scenarios, involve interaction among the major branches of knowledge, and open up possibilities for future action. Several programs and partnerships were created, such as Edmond and Lily Safra International Neurosciences Institute of Natal, UFRN’s International Institute of Physics, National Science and Technology Institutes (CNPq/INCTs), Center of Petroleum and Renewable Energies, Institute of Tropical Medicine of Rio Grande do Norte – IMTRN, Digital Metropolis, and Institute of Contemporary Languages, Literatures and Cultures – ÁGORA.
