Located in the historic city of Gondar, Ethiopia, the University of Gondar is one of the oldest and most well established higher education institutions in the country. Our University was established in 1954 as a Public Health College and Training Center (PHC & TC) in joint effort between the Imperial Ethiopian government, WHO, United States Operation Mission to Ethiopia, and UNICEF. Dictated by the pressing health needs that existed in the 1940s and 1950s the PHC & TC quickly became established as a pioneer center for public health practice serving as a key source of Ethiopia’s health professionals. It remains the Ethiopia’s oldest medical training institution.
This was also the era that gave birth to the philosophy of team approach and community based teaching of health professionals. During the 1950s all 2nd year clinical nurses, sanitarians and 3rd year health officers would go out into the community and provide health promotion as well as preventative, curative and rehabilitative services. This early work has developed and evolved into the Team Training Program (TTP)within the current College of Medicine and Health Science.
In 2001, the first new faculty, the Faculty of Management Sciences and Economics (recently renamed as the College of Business and Economics) was opened. In the spring of 2003, the name of the College was changed to Gondar University College. It was at this time that two new faculties namely, the Faculty of Applied Natural Sciences (now the Faculty of Natural and Computational Sciences) and the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Humanities (now the College of Social Sciences and the Humanities were added. The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the then Faculty of Law (now the School of Law) were opened in 2003 and 2005 respectively. Furthermore, one new faculty namely, the Faculty of Agriculture, and two schools namely, the School of Technology and the School of Education were opened in 2009 and started to enroll students in September 2010.
Currently, the University owns 65 undergraduate and 81 postgraduate programs. In addition, Extension, Distance and Summer Degree Programs are being offered by most of the schools, faculties and colleges. Recently the University has launched 3 PhD programs.