In 1908, the benefits of the Morill-Nelson Act declared applicable to the island, fostered the rapid growth of the university.

[9] The founding of the institution is credited to D.W. May (Director of the Federal Experiment Station), José de Diego and Carmelo Alemar.

The LAI is an athletic organization, similar to the NCAA, created with the purpose of promoting and regulating sports activities.

[15] In 1942 as a result of university reform, the campus was organized with a considerable degree of autonomy into the Colleges of Agriculture, Engineering, and Science under the direction of a vice-chancellor.

[16] The University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez is the second largest Hispanic-serving institution in the United States.

Its main task is to participate in the formulation of academic processes within the university's legal structure.

[7] The Mayagüez campus is one of two land-grant universities in the tropics and the only one where Spanish is the native language (although English is also used extensively).

[41] UPRM is one of the important centers in the Atlantic region for the study of tropical marine science due to its location, facilities, and researchers.

There is a Center for Civil Infrastructure used to design structures resistant to natural disasters and transportation systems.

Some of the most important fields include digital humanities, Caribbean cultural studies, and transnational topics.

Arts and Sciences is the college with the largest portfolio of funded research at the university and the highest number of patents, mostly from the Physics Department.

[45] Its researchers, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are at the forefront of areas such as tsunamis, nanotechnology, protein, oceanic processes, bio‐markers, coral reefs, applied economics, disasters, monitoring of seismic activity, biodiversity and physical oceanography.

[45][46] The research facilities includes a campus-wide wireless network available to the whole university community (over 80 access points), Internet 2 Institution with an OC3 access line, video conference facilities, online course development platform, 42 academic computer labs for students (1,032 computers estimated), about 5,000 computers estimated including administrative, faculty and research facilities and a campus network backbone infrastructure interconnecting over 40 buildings fiber optics.

The campus has had an Olympic swimming pool in the Natatorio RUM and a Tennis Center since the 2010 Central American and Caribbean Games.

[52] Since September 1, 2003, the Mayagüez campus competes as an independent university in the NCAA's Division II.

It participates in men's basketball, baseball, cross country running, soccer, swimming, tennis, track (outdoor), volleyball, taekwondo, and wrestling and in women's basketball, cross country running, swimming and tennis.

Some annual events include: In 2007 a group of students from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)-UPRM Chapter, created an Internet Radio Station starting with one weekly radio program and then broadcasting its programming through a web portal There are hundreds of student organizations in each faculty of the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus[53] including but not limited to the following: