Even exchange provides more opportunities

Cal State Long Beach will participate in the California-Mexico Project, promoting the exchange of students and faculty from Californian and Mexican universities, officials announced Tuesday.

Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D- Anaheim) introduced Assembly Concurrent Resolution 146, a tentative agreement that in the long term would send an even exchange of students who would not have to pay out-of-state tuition. The 2009 summer semester will host the first group of Mexican students at CSULB, according to Armando Vazquez-Ramos, Chicano/Latino studies professor and coordinator of the California-Mexico Project.

Solorio appeared at a luncheon on campus to recognize those involved in the project. The approved agreement will allow for the California Research Bureau to conduct a study and create a report of how many students currently study in Mexico, and determine the need for the project.

Kenneth Curtis, vice president for international programs, spoke on behalf of CSULB President F. King Alexander, and Karen Gould, the provost of education. According to Curtis, CSULB has agreed to take part in the project and exchange with the Autonomous University of Nayarit. He said this is necessary to connect the local community in California to the global community.

“I am proud to see CSULB be the center of this process,” Curtis said.

Curtis said it is time to pay attention to the community makeup of Southern California.

Robert Miranda, a political science major, said this would give students a good opportunity to get to know the Mexican culture more closely.

“This is the smartest thing CSULB could do,” Miranda said.

Miranda took a trip last summer with a group of students to interact with the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) student body.

“They are basically more politically active and it would be great to learn from them,” Miranda added.

Vazquez-Ramos and Omar Wicab, president of the Autonomous University of Nayarit and Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education in the central-western region, have been working with the California-Mexico Project since May 2006. Vazquez-Ramos said that he hopes that this project will help increase the number of students to study abroad and learn not only from the university but also through interacting with middle-class and low-income people.

He said that the students who do study in Mexico go to the most prestigious universities and don’t get a chance to interact with low-income and middle-class students.

Vazquez-Ramos also said the California-Mexico Project will include other CSUs —Fullerton, Los Angeles, Dominguez Hills, Northridge, Pomona, San Bernardino and Bakersfield. He said he hopes that CSULB will be the center the project.

Gerry Riposa, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said the program is an opportunity for Mexican students living in California to travel to Mexico and get to know the region from which their families came.

CSULB has agreed to support the California-Mexico Project, and be part of an exchange with students from the different ANUIES universities of the central-western region of the to come to our campus and test the program to look for improvements, Wicab said.

The interest of the students from the Mexican universities is to be able to come to the Californian universities and perfect their English, because Mexico has recognized that English has become a requirement in this world, Wicab said.

It is also an opportunity for second or third generation Latino students to reconnect with their families and improve their Spanish, Wicab added.

Nadia Zepeda, a Spanish and Chicano/Latino studies major, said she would be part of the project once it is fully installed because it would give her an opportunity to be with her family.

“I have family in Nayarit,” Zepeda said. “I am really excited to know the project can really happen.”