University of Miami Seeks to Create Institutional Consortium in Americas Latin American Herald Tribune March 14, 2018
BOGOTA – The University of Miami is seeking to create a consortium with other universities in the Americas with the aim of transforming itself into a hemispheric institution that provides better opportunities for student exchanges and cooperates in research, the school’s president, Julio Frenk, told EFE in Bogota.
“I’ve been meeting with some of the main universities here and I’m going to do it in other countries in Latin America with the idea of creating a consortium of universities,” Frenk said.
The UM president is visiting Colombia with the aim of attracting new students, strengthening the community of UM alumni and seeking opportunities for collaboration with other universities.
One of the consortium’s challenges will be to generate student exchanges that allow students “from Canada to the southern tip of South America” to share educational experiences, he said.
“The objective is ... to create opportunities for common educational experiences for these students, from taking courses together to having complete double degree programs in several universities in the hemisphere,” said Frenk, who served as Mexico’s health secretary from 2000-2006.
Meanwhile, the other great challenge for UM in becoming a hemispheric university platform is promoting research cooperation, which in some countries is hindered by the fact that not “all that is needed is being invested” to develop it.
“But even with those limitations, there are excellent groups of researchers all around the hemisphere, who are doing research on issues that concern the region. These studies and their impact will be magnified if they are carried out cooperatively and with an eye toward impacting our societies,” he said.
Frenk added that they are creating “a database (of) these current cooperative efforts” with an eye toward pursuing joint research on complicated problems such as climate change in cooperation with institutions in the hemisphere via the consortium.
“With that, we believe that we’re enriching the education of our students and also we’re becoming better citizens, more integrated into the global reality in which we live,” he said.
The initiative to make UM a hemispheric university is part of the roadmap the institution is following to celebrate its centennial in 2025.
By that date, UM aspires to transform itself into “the university that is excellent in the search for the highest standards in research and education,” as well as “the key university that is connected with the problems of the community and is trying to solve them,” Frenk said.
He added that the school also seeks to become the “exemplary university that is adopting values that are an example to society” and “taking advantage of its geographical location at the crossroads of the Americas.”
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Note by CDyVida.org: Julio Frenk's relations with the dictatorship in Cuba has been openly questioned and in a meeting with Cuban dissident activists it was promised that the UM would not establish any agreements with the Cuban regime or its universities. See El Nuevo Herald August 17, 2018
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