• While visiting Chile for the presidential hand-over ceremony, the highest authority of this Mexican institution, José Alfonso Esparza, met with Universidad de Santiago’s President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi and expressed his interest in creating academic partnerships in the fields of mining, engineering and social sciences.

On Monday 10th, Dr. Juan Manuel Zolezzi was visited by José Alfonso Esparza, President of Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Mexico, and by other representatives from that university, who showed their deep interest in creating formal links between both institutions in order to allow academic collaboration and student exchange.

President Esparza came to Chile to take part in the presidential hand-over ceremony and he seized the opportunity to visit our University, with which he has kept in contact thanks to our Department of International and Inter-University Relations.

During the meeting held at the Casa Central building, the two Presidents shared experiences regarding the higher education systems in Mexico and Chile and they agreed to foster the establishment of these academic partnerships that will benefit both institutions.

After the meeting, BUAP’s President highlighted the willingness that our University has shown to develop agreements, particularly in the fields of mining, engineering and social sciences.

“It was a very interesting meeting that exceeded our expectations. I think that this University has many experiences to share and we are very likely to settle an agreement in the short term, because we are very interested in this and Universidad de Santiago’s President showed his interest too. We will probably be signing a frame agreement soon to start with student exchanges,” Esparza said.

BUAP´s highest authority said that Puebla, Mexico, is starting to extract mineral resources, but it does not have any university program related to this field. This is why he thinks it is an area in which they could start learning from other experiences.

“Also, our researchers in the field of social sciences expressed their interest in forging links with this University. The engineering programs are equally interested,” he said.

The Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla is an independent, decentralized higher-education institution, located at Puebla City. It was founded 435 years ago and it has 65,685 students in undergraduate and graduate programs (2010). Today, it has shown its willingness to strengthen links with our renowned University.

Translated by Marcela Contreras