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Brazilian Institutions of Higher Education were conceived in Brazil in the 19th century as centers of professional training which offered undergraduate programs giving little attention to research. A systematic research training started in 1951 with the creation of CAPES, an agency of the Ministry of Education for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, and it improved when the agency was restructured in 1964. The Graduate Programs in Psychology implemented between 1965 and 1980 faced insertion difficulties in their institutions and had problems to present a profile which was consistent with the training of researchers and higher education faculty. Nevertheless, they made important contributions to doctorate training and research in Brazil. The current characteristics, designed in the 1980s, were incorporated by the new programs, among them, the Graduate Program in Psychology from the Federal University of Rio Grande Sul (UFRGS). This paper presents some considerations about the founding conditions and the fundamentals that are associated with the successful trajectory of the Graduate Program in Psychology from UFRGS and it describes the history of its foundation, its main principles and the way it is organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]