The Nueva Granada Military University (Spanish: Universidad Militar Nueva Granada), also called UMNG, is a public, auto sufficient, national, coeducational university based in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. The university has 8 faculties, 20 undergraduate, 66 graduate programs, 9 master's degrees, 44 Diploma and 52 research programs. It also offers a distance education being one of the most important national. The history of the university can be traced to 1962 when the Military School of Officers "José María Cordova" (Spanish: Escuela Militar de Cadetes "José María Córdova") started offering Civil Engineering, Economics and Law programs to the second lieutenants of the institution supplementary to the last two years of their professional education. In 1978, as a result of the idealistic conception of a sector of the medical staff at the Central Military Hospital, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences was founded, beginning its labor in the first semester of 1979.[