Queretaro’s universities sign an agreement with CALAREO to expand educational opportunities in the state

The Polytechnic and Technological Universities, as well as the National Aeronautics University, located in the state of Queretaro, signed a collaboration agreement with the Canada and Latin America Research and Exchange Opportunities (CALAREO) consortium, made up of five universities from Canada.

The objective of this Collaboration Agreement is to expand academic ties, facilitate academic cooperation, increase educational opportunities, enrich the educational environment, and promote international and intercultural research among Canadian and Queretaro universities. 

The Secretary of Education in the state, José Alfredo Botello Montes, said that, as has been done over five years of government in the field of education, “strong and firm steps continue to be taken, such as the signing of this important agreement collaboration between six public universities in the state and a consortium of Canadian universities, in favor of the academic exchange of students and researchers, who will be able to carry out stays with special projects between the universities, which, without a doubt, opens a range of opportunities for our young university students, he pointed out.

In his message, the Canadian Ambassador to Mexico, Graeme C. Clark, thanked the approach with his country; “Thank you for your vision in Canada, every day I remember the rich relationship between our country and beautiful Mexico; this agreement is of the utmost importance to our futures. The more young people, teachers and researchers have contact with each other, the more value there will be”. 

We have three challenges he listed: 1. How can we go beyond the relationship between us, go beyond the clichés? We have to keep exploring our cultures. 2. We have 23,000 Mexicans every year who go to Canada to study, this is very good; as a Canadian I want there to be more Canadians in Mexico to come to know our country, and 3. North America has the advantage of having three languages; as Mexicans, you have to think about the diversity that Canada offers, with another language that is French” , he highlighted. 

Likewise, the rector of Santa Rosa University, Enrique Gerardo Sosa Gutiérrez, on behalf of the Queretaro universities, highlighted the opportunities offered by the entity, “Queretaro is a state which has known how to take advantage of the modernization processes and knew how to insert itself very well in the production and manufacturing chains of NAFTA and now TMEC; and under the leadership of Governor Pancho Domínguez, now we seek to go further and make the state a focus of innovation, design, and avant-garde”, he noted. 

In his participation, the president of Lakehead University, Moira Pcherson, commented that the integration of the consortium has as its main objective the academic benefits between institutions in Latin America and Canada, “CALAREO was established in 2017 to strengthen research alliances. Collaboration with institutions in the state of Querétaro will benefit because we have a strong economic relationship, the efficiency of our approach supports the momentum”, she said.

In the presentation of the universities of Canada by Andrew P. Dean, vice president of Research and Innovation at Lakehead University and president of CALAREO, announced that with the agreement ” we are going to open our relationship with the state of Queretaro, international collaboration is always very exciting and it always enriches us, tomorrow we will talk with our researchers to start the relevant projects for the benefit of our communities”.