Agreement to benefit research and training among students and faculty
Texas Border Business
MCALLEN, TEXAS (Jan. 25, 2017) – South Texas College (STC) and Instituto Tecnológico de Reynosa have signed a general cooperation agreement to create tools for training through the use of a unique bi-national partnership more than eight years in the making.
At a special signing ceremony on Jan. 22, STC President Dr. Shirley A. Reed and Instituto Tecnológico director Mara Grassiel Acosta Gonzalez formalized the partnership that seeks to develop the exchange of research, information technologies, personnel training, and professional and technical improvement between the two institutions.
“As long as it has taken to finally be able to sign an agreement, it’s opening the doors for a lot of possibilities for your students and for our students, your faculty and our faculty,” Dr. Reed told representatives from Instituto Tecnológico. “We are excited for the opportunity to work with you.”
Programs between the two institutions will be dependent on separate amendments that will need to be signed before they are enacted. Programs may include joint projects between the two institutions related to the fields of scientific and technical knowledge; mobility programs for researchers, professionals, teaching staff and students; scientific and technical advice; and collaboration in professional training through the development of academic courses and activities that are of interest to the institutions.
“It’s been about eight years since we first started talking to them. It has been a slow and deliberate process and I’m glad we’re here now to begin helping industry at this point in time because Mexico is going through a transformational process in manufacturing and they need all the skilled people they can get,” said Mario Reyna, Dean of Business, Technology and Public Safety at South Texas College.
“This is an agreement with the Instituto Tecnológico de Reynosa and the purpose of signing this agreement is to work together in order to support the manufacturing industry in Reynosa,” Reyna said. “Tecnológico was created almost 30 years ago to support the manufacturing industry. All of their degrees are related to manufacturing. What they do is very similar to what we do at our Technology Campus. That is why signing this agreement is so important. We can support each other.”
More than 49 percent of all engineers in Mexico have graduated from InstitutoTecnológico de Reynosa, according to school representatives. The campus has graduated more than 595,000 students from their program among 254 institutions in the country.
“It has been over a year that I came to El Instituto Tecnológico De Reynosa. We feel pleased with the agreement that we have been waiting for 8 years since it initiated,” said Gonzalez translated from Spanish. “This is an opportunity for our students and instructors. Thank you for giving this opportunity to our students and instructors.”
 and Instituto Tecnologico de Reynosa have signed a general cooperation agreement to create tools for training through the use of a unique bi-national partnership more than eight years in the making. ){kind=link}