Reitores da Ufba: de Edgard Santos a Naomar de Almeida Filho

Abstract

The Council Room of the Rectorate of the Federal University of Bahia, where the higher collegiate bodies of the Institution meet, exhibits, on its walls, in addition to the Portuguese tiles from the 18th and 19th centuries from Solar do Bom Gosto, the portraits of the rectors who directed UFBA throughout its little more than sixty years. Added to this visual memory is this book Rectores da UFBA: de Edgard Santos a Naomar de Almeida Filho, the second volume of the Memorial Series, conceived to commemorate the sixty years of our University. In this book, coordinated and organized by Prof. Lídia Maria Batista Brandão Toutain, with the support of the UFBA Information Science Institute, records biographical data of these leaders, but mainly the contribution of each of them to the construction and consolidation of UFBA as a university of excellence and social commitment . If the first volume of this Series, UFBA: from the 19th century to the 21st century, allows the reader to know elements of the historical course of higher education in Bahia and, in particular, the process of constitution of the University of Bahia, later renamed Universidade Federal da Bahia, this second volume, by focusing on the university's directors, allows the reader to better understand this process through the voice of one of its actors - the deans, captured through documents, testimonies of those who lived with these directors, or directly, through interviews, with the deans who remain among us. Thus, the history of each of the 13 rectors who headed UFBA from 1946 onwards is part of the institutional history. Each of the Rectors also reflects, to a certain extent, moments in the history of the country, the Brazilian public administration and, mainly, the position of greater or lesser social prestige, greater or lesser autonomy experienced by the federal public university in each of these periods. With Edgard Santos, the first rector who headed UFBA for fifteen years, in five successive three-year terms, Bahia established its first university, enrolling 1,541 students in the 17 existing undergraduate courses in 1946. It was up to rector Edgard Santos to lead the construction of a truly magnificent university project, based on the experience of the bicentennial Faculty of Medicine of Bahia and Attached Schools of Dentistry and Pharmacy, the centuries-old Polytechnic School, Faculty of Law and School of Fine Arts and the more recent, at that time, Faculties of Economics and Philosophy, a legacy from which the actions of the Rectorates that succeeded him were guided. Sixty years after its creation, UFBA, under the leadership of Dean Naomar de Almeida Filho, redefined its institutional project in order to expand its offer of vacancies with inclusion and interiorization. At the end of his term, Rector Naomar may present new numbers: 113 undergraduate courses, offered in the day and night shifts, on the campuses of Salvador, Vitória da Conquista (Anísio Teixeira Campus) and Barreiras (Reitor Edgard Santos Campus) where they are around 29,000 students enrolled, of which 12,000 graduated from public schools; 105 stricto sensu graduate courses (64 master's degrees and 41 doctorates) in which around 4,000 students are enrolled. The texts that make up this book reveal the love and commitment of each of the rectors for the University; each of them, within their possibilities, contributed to strengthening UFBA as a public university of reference in Brazilian higher education, and ensuring its passage through the many years of violence and arbitrariness that dominated the country and affected the university institution, leading to the dismissal of professors. and the expulsion or suspension of many of its students. The record of institutional memory and, in this case, of the Rectors between the years 1946 and 2010, from the direct or indirect perspective of our rectors, will certainly help us to get to know our Institution and its leaders better and for the new rectors, knowledgeable from the institutional past and the experience of those who preceded them in the position, can perform their duties with competence and commitment, honoring and always improving the legacy received from them, thus building the present and the directions for the future of the Federal University of Bahia.