The first degree taught was that of Agricultural Technical Engineer, specialising in Agricultural and Livestock Operations, and the first graduates worked mainly in the provincial delegations of the Ministry of Agriculture, in the Land Registry and in the Agricultural Extension Services.
The School of Agricultural Technical Engineering was also the origin of the Lugo University Campus created by the General Law on Education and Financing of the Educational Reform, dated 4 August 1970, which took into account the incorporation of the middle-level technical schools, Teaching and Trade Schools as University Schools, as well as the University Colleges and the Schools of Technical Engineering.
At that time, apart from the University College, there were only four centres in Lugo that would become university centres, becoming dependent on the University of Santiago in 1972. They were the Teacher Training College, created in 1842, the Business School, created in 1945, the School of Agricultural Engineering, created in 1964, and the School of Technical Health Assistants, founded in 1972.
The Higher Polytechnic School of Engineering was created by Decree 26/1993, of 11 February, of the Consellería de Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Regional Ministry of University Education and Planning) of the Xunta de Galicia, integrating the studies of Agricultural Engineering, which had been taught since 1967, the Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineering, created in 1989, and the Higher Technical School of Forestry Engineering, created in 1991. The studies of Civil Engineering and Engineering in Topography were later incorporated in 2003.
The EPSE building on calle Benigno Ledo was inaugurated at the beginning of the 1994-1995 academic year. It originally consisted of seven independent buildings: four classrooms, a central administrative building and two halls. In 1997, a new building, hall 3, popularly known as "Extension", came into service.
Subsequently, the degrees taught were adapted to the European Higher Education Area and the Double Degree in Agricultural and Agrifood Engineering and Forestry and Environmental Engineering was introduced, along with the new degree in Robotics and the first inter-university degree in Galicia: the Degree in Landscape.
After five decades of teaching and research experience in the field of engineering, the EPS was transformed into the Higher Polytechnic School of Engineering, a fully consolidated reference centre in the national and international sphere both due to the quality of its teaching as well as its research, with the centre’s premise being the search for answers to the main problems demanded by society from the fields that we deal with, seeking to increase the economic and social welfare of our fellow citizens.