Minnesota State University renewed its student and faculty exchange agreement Friday with Mexico’s Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit.
At a ceremonial signing event, David Hood, MSU provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Veronica Melisa Contreras, dean of Universidad Autonoma de Nayarit’s College of Business, jointly signed a mobility agreement between the institutions. The pact allows the exchange of students and faculty and is a renewal of a partnership that began in 2018.
“Something that makes nations great is the exchange (between them),” Contreras said of the partnership through an interpreter. “When these activities take place, society grows and becomes richer.”
The renewal marks the second five-year mobility agreement, which allows the exchange of students. The more recent of the two iterations adds that the schools may also exchange faculty. Since the agreement’s inception in 2018, MSU has taken in eight students from UAN.
“I think it reinforces our commitment to global education and to ensuring that our students have broad exposure to different cultures, to different countries through our exchange programs,” Hood said. “It is our desire that we continue to grow our partnership with Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit so that we can expand the service that we offer them.”
At 1,719 students enrolled in the fall 2023 semester, MSU ranks eighth in the nation for international students, according to a recent Open Doors report. Ten students came from Mexico, two of whom are from UAN.
Octavio Manzano, a junior studying marketing, and Ana Banuelos, also a junior who is studying international business, both said their exchange experience at MSU has opened their eyes to a world of educational opportunities.
“There’s not a single place on this campus that I’m not listening to two or three languages at the same time,” Manzano said, noting an increase in diversity from his home university.
“I feel like there’s a different perspective of learning here in the United States, so maybe that perspective is something I can share with my classmates (at UAN),” Banuelos added.
Both students have chosen to extend what was supposed to have been one semester into a full year.
No students from MSU have opted to study at the Mexican university, at least not yet.
“That’s what we’re trying to change,” said Lupe Quintero, the director of community partnerships in MSU’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office. “What we’re trying to do now is advertise the program more.”
The relationship between the two schools took shape after a grad student Quintero was mentoring graduated and returned to his home state of Nayarit, Mexico. He later became a professor at UAN and expressed to Quintero his wish for other students like him to have the same opportunity to study at MSU.
Quintero and the heads of the offices of diversity, equity and inclusion and global education then forged the agreement with UAN.
Delegates from UAN spent the day at MSU and toured the university. They wrapped up with a dinner alongside Henry Morris, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, and Anne Dahlman, interim associate provost and dean of global education.
The agreement signed Friday is one of numerous MSU has with universities around the globe.