“100,000 Strong in the Americas” Funds Grant to Foster Student Exchange with ITESO, the Jesuit University of Guadalajara, Mexico

Dr. Claudio Meier, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Rebecca Laumann, Executive Director of CIES, working together with partners at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Guadalajara (ITESO) and the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP), a non-profit international exchange network of which both universities are members), recently obtained a $25,000 grant to increase collaboration between ITESO and the University of Memphis.      

The ITESO-Memphis Engineering Exchange proposal won a 2020 Mexico-U.S. Innovation Fund Competition award through the 100,000 Strong in the Americas innovation fund, established by a public-private partnership between the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Department of State and Partners for the Americas, a not-for-profit development agency, together with the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation, the Coca-Cola Mexico Foundation and Sempra Energy. Partners of the Americas was founded in 1964, inspired by President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress.  

As many academic collaborations, the ITESO-UofM relationship started from a personal contact when Zinnia Ron-Ferguson, a Guadalajara native who graduated from ITESO with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering, came to the UofM to obtain her master's in City and Regional Planning. As a graduate assistant at the Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CAESER), then named the Center for Partnerships in GIS, she and her husband Nate Ron-Ferguson built the initial links with Dr. Hugo de Alba, a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Engineering at ITESO, the Jesuit University of Guadalajara, founded in 1957.

Since 2015, four faculty and staff from UofM have taught summer courses at ITESO’s International Summer Program, including Dr. Meier, who visited and taught in Guadalajara in 2018 and 2019. Moreover, Dr. de Alba did a two-month exchange to Memphis, and five ITESO Environmental Engineering graduates have come to UofM to get their master's in Civil Engineering, working with Dr. Brian Waldron and colleagues at CAESER. One of these graduates, Rodrigo Villalpando-Vizcaíno, currently works as a water project assistant for CAESER.

The awarded project is called ITESO-Memphis Engineering Exchange (IMEE), and seeks to establish a sustainable program of intercultural exchange and practical engineering learning for both Mexican and U.S. undergraduate students. The IMEE program will allow ITESO and the University of Memphis to participate in an exchange partnership that lowers the barriers of coursework and cost for engineering students, offering participating students a unique opportunity to learn from both Mexican and U.S. experts on hydrology and environmental engineering. 

The hybrid virtual-in person program will focus on a two-week in-person program attached to ITESO’s International Summer School with a second two-week component delivered at the University of Memphis, with four weeks of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) components for all participants prior to arrival. The COIL component in the Environmental Engineering course at both institutions will be taught by Dr. Maryam Salehi, assistant professor in the UofM Department of Civil Engineering and Professor Daniel de Obeso, Department of Environmental Engineering, ITESO. The engineering summer course offered within ITESO’s Summer program, titled Hydrology and Limnology, will be co-taught by Drs. de Alba and Meier. In addition, there will be a two-week add-on option for Memphis students to enroll in Spanish-as-a-Second-Language courses at ITESO. 

ITESO students coming to Memphis will be offered research experiences for undergraduates in the Civil Engineering Department labs of Drs. Salehi, Farhad Jazaei, and Meier, collaborating with their numerous graduate students. Specifically, Dr. Salehi will lead ITESO students in research on lead in drinking water in homes and schools, Dr. Meier will support students in lab experiments on surface water-groundwater interactions, with field work in Mississippi River tributaries, while Dr. Jazaei will supervise students in lab experiments on contaminants in ground water and microplastics in agricultural soils. These research experiences will increase ITESO student’s expertise in lab and field research on water, with the added bonus of an international perspective on water research, fostering their interest in pursuing graduate studies. 

Students will earn college credit from their home institutions for participation in the programs. In addition, University of Memphis students going to Guadalajara will be able to use the Spanish course for their non-engineering courses University requirements. Perhaps more importantly, they will have the opportunity to do impactful field studies on hydrology with their local counterparts in Mexico, building meaningful professional and academic relationships across international borders while contributing to the local community. They will conduct this field work under the auspices of multiple organizations, such as the Mexican Institute for Community Development and the Dirección de Planeación, Ordenamiento Territorial y Gestión Urbana (the local agency in charge of land and city planning). Della Burke and Rebecca Van Dyck-Laumann, the Study Abroad Officers at ITESO and Memphis, respectively, will provide logistical support for the program. Dr. Michael Alijewicz at ISEP will be responsible for the grant’s implementation and reporting. Faculty members at ITESO and UofM (Drs. Meier, Salehi, Jazaei, Dr. de Alba and Prof. de Obeso) will provide faculty support at both institutions. Dr. Meier is also the project’s director.

The University of Memphis looks forward to taking their established relationship with ITESO to new levels of collaboration.

Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected in an open, merit-based competition that considers leadership potential, academic and/or professional achievement and record of service. Their careers are enriched by joining a network of thousands of Fulbright alumni, many of whom are leaders in their fields. Notable Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 78 MacArthur Fellows and 41 who have served as a head of state or government. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 participants from over 160 countries the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. 

The University of Memphis is thrilled to have three Fulbright Scholars and four visiting Fulbright Scholars. Fulbright Scholars are Ivan Ortiz (U.S. Student Fulbright recipient), Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta and Dr. Ryan Parrish. Visiting Fulbright Scholars are Frans Samosir from Indonesia, Heri Yusup from Indonesia, Tsimafei Krachko from Germany and Dr. Afaq Ahmad from Pakistan.