Growing Partnerships with Mexican Universities

To: All campus

Re: Growing Partnerships with Mexican Universities

On Wednesday, March 1, we were thrilled to welcome 116 undergraduates and 3 faculty from Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, Mexico’s preeminent agricultural university. They toured the campus, saw our new Experimental Smart Farm, greenhouses, and poplar grove, and met with and heard presentations from 15 faculty and staff working in the areas of agricultural technology, plant biology, and sustainable agriculture. During the lunch break, there were lines out the door as they waited to sign up for more information about applying to UC Merced graduate programs, especially after Graduate Dean Hrant Hratchian offered them all application fee waivers. Meanwhile, the faculty from our two institutions met over lunch to share ideas for future collaborations.

This was the latest of UC Merced’s growing collaborations with Mexican universities. Last August, I led a delegation to Mexico City and Puebla to meet with representatives of la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), UA Chapingo, Universidad de las Americas Puebla (UDLAP), representatives from the US Embassy and local stakeholders. We signed an MOU promising student and faculty exchanges with UDLAP and I committed $50,000 per year for three years to further these and other initiatives with Mexican universities. Professors Josué Medellín-Azuara, Tracey Osborn, and Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz joined me for this delegation, along with Special Assistant to the Chancellor Marjorie Zatz, Chief of Staff Luanna Putney, and Director of International Relations Garett Gietzen.

In November, Professor Medellín-Azuara led a workshop on water resources management at Casa de California, in Mexico City, joined by Professors Josh Viers, Tom Harmon, Marc Beutel, John Abatzoglou, Marjorie Zatz, and Director Garett Gietzen. Four research projects are now underway with Mexican colleagues as a result. During that workshop, Dr. Zatz invited Mexican faculty to send their best students to work with our faculty on these and other climate related reseach projects during the summer—13 of our faculty expressed interest in working with the students and 46 students applied! On March 6, we sent acceptance letters to 12 students from UDLAP, UNAM, Instituto Nacional Politécnico, and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. They will join us for 9 weeks this summer as part of UROC’s Summer Undergraduate Research Institute, conducting research on climate change, learning about graduate programs here at UC Merced, and exploring Yosemite and other sites of interest nearby. We plan to invite their advisors to join us at the end of the summer for a closing research symposium.

We hope to complement this program by sending a group of UC Merced undergraduates to Puebla this summer for internships with various Mexican companies under the auspices of UDLAP’s well established internship program. And this is just the start to our increased international visibility and opportunities for our students. UC Merced students have opportunities to study abroad in more than 40 countries, and we are building infrastructure for new study abroad programs, including our first faculty-led courses, that are shorter than traditional year-long, semester or summer programs. These programs will provide exciting new educational opportunities and expand on the breadth of options for a global education that are available to our students.

Go Bobcats!

Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Ph.D.

Chancellor